Atlantic Monthly: Antonin Scalia Totally Gets Net Neutrality

I didn't read the entire article, but the thing we're meant to respond to appears to be this assessment of "Net Neutrality" from Justice Scalia:

“It would be odd to say that a car dealer is in the business of selling steel or carpets because the cars he sells include both steel frames and carpeting."

It evidences a lack of understanding and an impatience to pursue one. Bandwidth is not pure abstraction. It is "wires and cables" and a multitude of other things large and small from satellites to switching algorithms. Heavier draw costs more of this stuff. This has been acknowledged from the beginning. In fact, bandwidth service has always been tiered. You could always lease a T1 line, for instance.

 Upon this infrastructure, all industries have established themselves, as have industries peculiar to the internet. Amazon wants to stream you video at a competitive price. Google wants your web-based computing to be as seamless as the old paradigm so you'll locate your computing where their advertising and data-mining clients can access you.

 The typical user will never feel the faintest ripple from the event of Bandwidth Providers charging Content Providers more for the amount of infrastructure used to support them, They may pass the cost down to you. Or not, since, in many cases, your rather modest digital footprint is the the thing they're delivering to their actual clients. They want bandwidth providers to deliver you to them for less.

A similar disposition animates the agitation for "Net Neutrality" from below. The grass roots of the movement emerged from the P2P sharing community. P2P was addictive to some people. These people were angry to discover that their cable company, naturally, had been throttling the pipeline to their homes in order to maintain consistent delivery within costs. They wanted that huge burst of bandwidth at the beginning of the month to stay with them all month long, essentially so they could keep Kazaa open 24/7 downloading ripped DVDs, scanned comics and cracked software.

 Just as stalactites and stalagmites reach toward one another in the darkness, "Net Neutrality" is advanced from high and demanded from below. It is, however, only about getting something from somebody else for nothing.

 It is not about getting a unit of bandwidth for nothing more than the cost of the preceding and following unit of bandwidth any more than a car dealer sells a uniform unit of car. I would challenge Justice Scalia to find me ten car dealers who would testify that they don't sell carpet, if you catch my meaning.