As reported on TechCrunch, Department of Justice said imposing Net neutrality regulations could "could deter broadband Internet providers from upgrading and expanding their networks to reach more Americans."
Chief amongst their examples was that the one of the oldest data delivery systems, the U.S. Postal Service, charges customers differently based on guarantees and speeds of delivery, ranging from bulk mail to overnight. Similarly, the Department believes ISPs who deliver data packages, should be able to offer different levels of service to spread the costs of improving networks.
I still think this analogy clouds the issue. As one commenter noted, the Post Office generally charges for the size and weight of the package and the guaranteed speed of delivery. Sometimes first class mail gets there in a day or two, sometimes it doesn't. If you want guarantees, you pay. If you want to ship a large package, you pay as well.
What they're missing here is that the providers already account for this in what the users pay. ISPs already charge for certain Quality of Service (QoS) standards and for the amount of bandwidth you use. When you get a line, you pay for both how much data you use across the month and how fast you can transfer that data at any given time. This is not and never has been the issue.
Perhaps the most important thing in that analogy is that the post office doesn't discriminate on the contents of the package. They don't charge you more if you're shipping a business book instead of a fiction best seller. They don't charge Amazon more than they charge me when I sell stuff on eBay. It's a fair system because, like all of the other analogies already provided, they charge you based on how much you use, regardless of who you are or what you want to put in the box.
The DOJ also suggested leaving things to the market.
Whether or not the same type of differentiated products and services will develop on the Internet should be determined by market forces, not regulatory intervention.
As I've said before, I generally agree with this statement - I prefer to leave things to the market, not regulation by fools like Senator Ted Stevens. The problem is that this is an imperfect market with little to no competition in most cases. (We can even ignore the conflict of interests that I've already written about for now).
My real problem is "letting the market decide" when the market is an oligopoly at best and a monopoly at worst. Anti-trust principles generally raise some red flags when there are relatively few suppliers, relatively high barriers to entry and high elasticity of demand. I have a single choice for my cable provider; some of the real lucky ones may have 2-3. If Google refuses to pay for premium delivery, you and I will be adversely affected - and may not have a viable substitute.
The electricity analogy is closer to the truth than the post office, because at least we have readily available alternatives to the post office. I can just as easily walk into a FedEx or UPS store and ship through them instead. In most cases, you really have one choice for your energy delivery company, but with the choice to purchase your energy from different ESCOs. This isn't too dissimilar to the way my cable works - I only have Time Warner, though I can "choose" Earthlink over RoadRunner (even if it's the same hardware, connection and price - the only thing that really changes is my e-mail address).
If you want to let the market decide, you first have to correct the market to allow free competition. Otherwise, we need to ensure that the oligopoly in control of vital infrastructure doesn't abuse that power.