> - Telcos want to charge content providers for better network performance than they're currently getting. This pretty much necessarily means that those who don't pay will receive poorer service than they're currently getting.

I think this is where we fundamentally disagree. I don't see any problem with the concept of "pay more to get better service." My question to you, then, is this: how much "poorer" do you expect service to become if this happens? I expect not entirely very much. As ahmoacah says, most network bandwidth is pretty thoroughly underutilised at the moment. Also comes to mind that it's not in the best interest of the service providers to screw over all non-business end users.

Here's the deal. I'm not so much a fan of legislation because something potentially COULD be used for evil instead of niceness. I'd rather let it pan out and then legislate it out of existence IF it turns out to be a terrible thing.