Ahh, so the government wanted to control how the bandwidth providers used their own product? Got it. The government nor the content providers own the "internet"(except in some rare cases). Corporations have laid or leased long haul fiber that connects you to Netflix, Netflix did not put that fiber in. The only part of that that Netflix is paying for, is what they use at their corporate offices or data centers. Otherwise, all of the subscribers pay for the bandwidth thru their ISP. Without those subscribers, there ain't much bandwidth use there. Now say that Netflix wanted to pay your ISP to give their data priority in order to provide a better user experience(and therefore maybe get a higher price point). Netflix could go ahead and include this in their already tiered offers, put it in the highest tier.

I don't really see how this is bad for the end user. It's not like something is going to happen that causes the base package of Netflix to cost $80 a month, b/c then there would be a lot less cable subscription for the ISP and a lot less Netflix subscribers. Yes, these companies are greedy and want to maximize their profits, but they ain't stupid enough to price themselves out of business.