I'm not convinced that such local monopolies change the equation here. Access to the internet might be a right, but is unlimited access to Netflix a right? A monopoly on essentials must be regulated, because there's no market elasticity (and the extremists often deny even that). A monopoly on entertainment, though? Even a monopoly is constrained in how much in can charge for such a thing before customers just walk away.
Network Neutrality(tm) isn't about constraining these monopolies. It doesn't even address the issues of price gouging or discrimination against consumers. If that's what we want, there are whole different sets of laws to talk about. The regulations currently at issue only seem to address concerns orthogonal to those related to monopolies.
The ISPs (with their local market monopolies) are also content providers. How is them using their network/distribution monopoly to gain an unfair advantage for their content distribution different from Microsoft using their OS to gain an unfair advantage for their browser in the 90's? Isn't NN about constraining unfair competition practices?
Fair enough. If the ISPs don't what to be liable for the content that traverses their network then they ought to be neutral to content and not prioritize traffic based on it's content (or source, destination, protocol, etc). But if they are inspecting the packets then they should have some liability for what they are delivering and the content on their network. The ISPs want it both ways like someone else mentioned, the want to control what people see but not be liable (responsible).
How about they don't inspect any content, but I download the media player provided by my ISP and it doesn't contribute to my data cap, but netflix does?
I would think if they have data caps then they will have to determine how much data their own content consumes and count it against the data cap. Otherwise this is abusing their network monopoly to support and provide an unfair advantage to their content business.
In the United States there are often deals where certain services used on certain networks do not count against mobile data caps. For example, DirectTV Now app does not count against an AT&T datacap.
I don't know if internet access is a "right", but it is pretty important in a modern society because internet access equals information access. It is hard to be an informed, productive participant in a modern society without information. Therefore unlimited access to Google search is a better example than Netflix.
And I would argue it isn't unlimited. It's limited to the rate the ISP offers. If I'm sold a line that offers up to 100mbps/sec then it shouldn't matter from what source I'm requesting to receive those 100mbps/sec from. Now if the source can't provide them at that rate that's on the source, but the ISP ought not be throttling them.
Network Neutrality(tm) isn't about constraining these monopolies. It doesn't even address the issues of price gouging or discrimination against consumers. If that's what we want, there are whole different sets of laws to talk about. The regulations currently at issue only seem to address concerns orthogonal to those related to monopolies.