Something else that would become an issue that Handler did not mention, but is relevant, is the fact ISP’s would also manage traffic where content providers would have to bid higher prices to allow heavier and faster flow of traffic to view their web sites. In other words: since Wal-Mart can fork out more money, more people can visit at once and navigate throughout their site faster versus a small business owner who is trying to advertise their services. Content providers are up in arms over the matter due to the fact that they feel that this type of management could cause for monopolies to form on the internet, and cause censorship to form as well. The censorship would form by Internet Service Providers denying their customers easy access to rival sites in order to keep their customers loyal to them.
InformationWeek (2009) has let known that Comcast has also been slapped on the wrist, relatively much harder than any other ISP available. Comcast has been monitoring traffic speed during peak hours of high internet usage to help the flow of traffic stay steady. They also have targeted people who are using P2P (Peer-to-Peer, i.e. LimeWire, Kazaa, BitTorrent, eDonkey, etc.) programs to download material including pirated illegal copies of music, games, videos, etc. and limit their transfer speeds. They had claimed they were doing it only during peak hours, but had been caught by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) while doing it during off peak hours as well. Comcast had claimed that they felt they have done nothing wrong, but ended up being the first internet provider who was formally warned and ordered to stop what they were doing by the FCC.
Another case where InformationWeek (2009) displayed an example of a recent event would be when AT&T abruptly blocked a popular subculture website called “4chan.” Anyone with AT&T service was unable to access the site and users were exclaiming censorship and network neutrality infringement. AT&T had to explain and restate several times that they had not blocked the site due to any material held on the website and had blocked access to the site due to having constant “DoS” (Denial of Service) attacks to 4chan for 3 weeks straight. Even to this day, there is still some controversy as to how the situation was handled. The founder of “4chan”, Christopher "Moot" Poole has explained that AT&T did not inform him of the actions they had taken and that he had been handling the situation himself and was surprised when AT&T interjected themselves.
Overall with the sensitivity and the amounts of protests with users and content providers, it does not look like ISP’s will get their way any time soon. Internet Providers already get a large amount of income simply due to how important the internet is to the average person in today’s time. It all comes down to nobody feels that the Internet providers should hold the power of not only providing internet, but also controlling it. The content providers and internet providers are incomplete without each other and would probably benefit if they were able to get along better, simply due to the fact without the content, the ISP’s have nothing to provide, and without the ISP’s the content that’s available cannot be seen.
There's some excerpts from it. Sorry for the crappy writing, it was one of those 'last minute' papers.