The US government should implement a Net Neutrality policy.

"This debate is about what the Internet will become in the years to come" No it's a debate about FCC regulating ISPs in regards to access rates with users and what business plans they can entail. I've already pointed out the falsity of such statements in the prior round. It remains an ipse dixit claim bordering on fear mongering. It ignores the nature of what the Internet is, what property is and seeks to void the proper use of an ISPs property. "Let's look at the Verizon example given" Strawman. The argument detailing the expenditure of Verizon dealt with that the ISP themselves provide the infrastructure, including the upgraded technology. Nor did I argue that net neutrality makes such ventures unprofitable. What net neutrality does is explicitly reduce the available income of an ISP by denying it the ability to tailor access rates to customer supply. The corollary of that is that under net neutrality, fees of *all* users must then account for the discrepancy in profit margin in relation to infrastructure growth. It makes all the payers for the benefit that only some want. That's the issue there. Even so such arguments from profit amount to little more than red herrings. What one may do rightfully with ones property is unrelated to any profit they garner from such as an arbiter. "Making your network faster, advancing your network, will be met enthusiastically by consumers, and is not undermined by net neutrality." Absolutely it is. The available income diminishes exponentially once you implement net neutrality as a *price control mechanism* for ISPs which is an *explicit* goal of net neutrality. To state this will have zero effect on an ISPs ability to expand current infrastructure and invest in new technology that will grant greater access speed is simply ignorant. Net neutrality denies tailoring plans, i.e., variance in priced plans that relate to access rates. It demands that access rates are indeterminate by use. That means heavy use cannot be charged accordingly for those wishing to pay, it means those wishing to pay for stable high access speeds cannot. It means the cost of users who do use high amounts of data transfer must be costed by all. If, as was the case with Comcast, an ISP is forced to devote a large portion of its bandwidth to a minority of its customer base, it is overall not being used profitably. The fallout of making an ISP's property less profitable, under government force, is the reduction of incentive to increase its bandwidth capacities by investing in more property and likewise innovative technology or services. "dumb internet" Net neutrality advocates a 'dumb' or stupid Internet - one unregulated by an intelligence that might favor the transmission of some content over other content. It's simply another way of saying no priority can be given to data over any other. However to advocate such a thing one must ignore what the Internet is, namely, transmission of data across private property. Data is transmitted through the infrastructure of ISPs (explicitly their private property) all the cables, computers, maintenance and infrastructure that make the Internet **possible at all.** The "stupid" Internet of net neutrality advocates is explicitly one in which ISPs must, under threat of government force, remain passive to how data flows through their infrastructure. "consumers would be unable tailer their internet for their use ." Irrelevant. The call for net neutrality is the ability to administer controls *to the ISP* not the end user. Customisation of user preferences only relates to how ISPs have the ability to manage their data transfer. The ability for an ISP to offer a premium rate of access to customers willing to pay is not analogous to the end user changing their router settings. Just like the ability to have express mail delivery services is unrelated to when you decide to post a package. "My opponent seems to leave out the fact that for those servers to be accessed, people need to go through ISPs." I think you'll find I mentioned such fact several times. Such as net neutrality neutralising an ISPs ability to charge differentiated prices to servers of varying size requirements. "consumer traffic for the benefit of their bank accounts is directly related to the entrepreneurial nature of the internet" Again, unrelated to how business interests work, the history of the Internet itself showing explicitly contrary. The fear mongering is still ipse dixit. "allowing competing services primarily operating out of a garage , or teaming multi billion dollar companies to crush their competition?" I'm saying irrelevant. That's the point. Servers require ISPs. End users require servers and ISPs. ISPs require end users and servers. ISPs aren't blocking servers apart from ones related to illegal activity and have no business interest in doing so. Again, still irrelevant to private property violation and net neutrality itself. "ISPs are profit motivated." Of course. They are a business. None of this has to do with validating net neutrality - freezing the ability of ISPs to tailor data priority if they so choose, across property they own. "who owns the Internet." I covered this already in R1. Source code and protocols are for the majority, open source. ISP infrastructure - private, servers - private, end user hardware - private. "Should we allow the Internet to be controlled by companies" Equivocation. Data is transmitted through private property. "the 5 or so network service providers that control the Backbone of the Internet, would control access to the entire network." If by access you mean ISPs are ISPs, then yes they are. That ISPs may discriminate data content and charge premium rates for it is their right as a business. Again no different from say, cable TV services. Net neutrality however denies customers willing to have premium access at their choosing and ISPs from offering it. "we inhibit future improvements and adaptations." Under FCC regulations, such innovation would be likely barred, seeing as it amounts to *variance in data* which is what net neutrality explicitly denies. Unregulated, people are free to innovate and support what they deem fit. As has been the cases up to now. An ISP that doesn't provide access is not a successful ISP. Largely irrelevant though. "ISPs thus have every reason to censor and favor certain information, competitors, and sites." Why censor when you can charge differentiating rates? Again, an ISP that does not provide services to end users isn't a successful one. There is no valid reason to assume an ISP will run as an authoritarian regime that denies access to content. A point which again is irrelevant to net neutrality which deals with data prioritisation and not, content availability. Nothing about the FCC's net neutrality regards base censorship. Net neutrality is about *how* data is transmitted. Not what. http://www.fee.org... http://www.naviganteconomics.com... "This is completely false and baseless claim." They are already doing it with radio and TV 'balanced view' proposed regulation. There's nothing to suggest they consider the Internet any differently in terms of media. "ISPs being peering into your packets, building online profiles of you, and selling it to the highest bidder, is in no way being indifferent to the contents of those packets." Again, irrelevant to net neutrality. It's purely a contractual issue between end user and provider.