Net Neutrality, Boon or Bane for Free File Sharing Service?

File sharing service gives network users the liberty to download contents such as music and videos, but this results in heavy traffic occupying Internet Service Providers' (ISP) bandwidth. ISPs could adopt certain measures such as granting low speed to file sharing users to effectively manage net traffic. This, however, is against the net neutrality rules that limit the capacity of ISPs to control Internet traffic. This paper establishes a simple framework to analyze the effect of net neutrality regulation on file sharing users. We find that net neutrality does not necessarily improve consumer surplus as well as the social welfare; it crucially depends on how much extra traffic is generated by the file sharing service and the how big the distribution cost is for the Content Provider (CP). Moreover, if the ISP is allowed to charge the CP a fixed payment for content distribution, it could take the optimal level of industrial profit by successfully manipulating the CP's pricing strategy. But if the ISP is allowed to charge a per usage fee, then the excessive amount of file sharing users may lead to an extremely high content price set by the CP, which is not socially desirable