But then I'd point out that YouTube and other bandwidth-intensive sites ALREADY PAY for their increased data. YouTube was burning through a ton of cash - money which was being spent on its carrier. Why should they be charged a premium above this because the carrier doesn't want people watching video online? (Perhaps because it has a competing IPTV service).

I believe that two sites that have the same amount of traffic should pay the same bandwidth bill, regardless of the nature of the traffic. That is how I define a neutral network (along the lines of the electricity analogy I posted previously).

Network connectivity has become the equivalent of a public utility, and we're dealing with an allowed oligopoly here. Because of the significant barriers to entry, there isn't going to be free competition, so we can't necessarily rely on the market.

So I may be generally against direct regulation, but the power of those limited sellers needs to be held in check somehow. We can't give them the ability to discriminate based on competition (e.g., Skype and Vonage) or just things they don't like (e.g., pornography). If we treat the network as a quasi-public utility, then we should hold it to the same standards as we would hold any government regulation - and these would certainly be content-based regulations looked at with strict scrutiny.

Do you agree that this is something we want to avoid? If so, how do you propose that we achieve it, recognizing that there is an imperfect and unbalanced market?