Net neutrality advocates don’t get it.

They justify nostalgia for 80-year-old communications laws with platitudes like “all online data is equal” and, like telephone networks, “the Internet has always been neutral.” On this, they are mistaken. A few milliseconds of delay for an email is unnoticed but it makes, say, a video chat with a doctor unusable. As the Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist and early Internet developer David Clark said, the Internet is not neutral and has never been neutral. Network engineers and computer scientists in academia and industry for decades have prioritized certain online tasks and services.These misunderstood and demonized “fast lanes” are increasingly used in the broadband provided to businesses and homes. Special treatment is afforded to phone calls, for instance, so that a phone call to grandma over broadband works even when junior is watching YouTube upstairs on the same line.