The real concern for me is not the money, while that sucks a lot of dick. What I'm worried about is a potential crippling of the evolution of our society.
This big repeal by the FCC makes the internet a little less internetty and more like a mainstream media outlet. Let's say there's a doc out there that uncovers information about a certain corrupt organization, maybe a particular government agency, a huge corporation, a banking conglomerate, or whatever it may be. There's no guarantee that the ISP's will charge you to see said doc, if they want to, they could choke it off altogether and not even offer the option to buy access. All it takes is for an organization lobbying the ISPs to limit data from a list of sources. If said docs on da list, bam, it's out of circulation.
Also in trouble is the one hope we have against the Fed, our silver bullet, cryptocurrencies. One of the single greatest sources of corruption in this world could be unplugged from it's source of power: the blood, sweat and tears of common people.
But, now with this bullshit, the big exchanges are in trouble. They could make coinbase so expensive to access that it would be much more feasible to make a return to fiat currencies.
Also in for it is the little man with the big idea. Activists, grass roots projects, small businesses - they're all in trouble if they can't afford to be "favored." And even if they can afford to be favored, who's to say they'll be allowed through the gates?
Basically anything that has a real shot at affecting change - what we arguably need the most in this world - could be snipped as a sapling. It depends on HOW something could affect change.
If restrictions and squelching take place, it won't be for a couple years - they won't be able to successfully implement this outside of anything but an incremental process, or they'll otherwise risk a swift and firey backlash. People could find new ways to exchange information, these ISPs could go the way of the dinosaur. There's already talk of crowd-funded projects that could potentially create a decentralized, strictly community-owned and democratically-run ISP. If they play it out slowly, people will comply, get acclimated, and slowly but surely, take it up the hiney.
Do you think it's possible to crowd-fund a democratically run ISP? 