On December 14, the Federal Communications Commission is due to vote on a plan to repeal its net neutrality regime. If this gets a green light, it will reshape the way the Internet works in America, and most likely to the detriment of consumers and entrepreneurs.

The FCC’s net neutrality rules prevent Internet service providers such as Comcast and Verizon from blocking or slowing down (legal) content. They also prohibit them from engaging in “paid prioritization,” or letting some companies pay to have their content delivered faster than others. After much debate, the rules were enshrined by the agency’s Obama-era “Open Internet Order,” introduced in 2015.

Ajit Pai, a Republican and former Verizon executive appointed by President Trump to lead the FCC, wants to overturn the order. His intention to do so, which had been widely telegraphed (see “What Happens If Net Neutrality Goes Away?”), has sparked a heated debate. Pai and his supporters want to give ISPs greater freedom over how they organize and charge for their services; opponents fear his plan will give ISPs too much power to determine what people see online.

The Open Internet Order switched the classification of broadband from a lightly regulated “information service” to a “telecommunications service,” which empowered the FCC to impose tougher, utility-style regulation on ISPs. Pai and his allies blame this approach for depressing broadband investment. In a speech earlier this year, Pai claimed that domestic investment by the nation’s 12 biggest ISPs fell by 5.6 percent, or $3.6 billion, between the start of 2014 and the end of 2015.