The Internet...oh that Internet beast...will it gobble you up? Net Neutrality will affect both the bloggers and their readers.

Don't let the date on this report get in the way of what's current.  I cross-posted this so that you might get a better picture of what is about to concern you if the politicians get their way.

  Over at the Huffington Post there's a headline story that reads "Net Neutrality Needs Your Help Today "  dated April 14, 2010, and that makes it very current!  Worse yet, the article is by John Kerry...Senator John Kerry from Massachusetts. That in an of itself should make you wary of what they are trying to do (word clue: control).  Now I don't have any immediate references as to how much money Mr. Kerry recieved from those backing this measure but I do remember explicitly that Hilary Clinton got a handful of money (that link alone brought in $119,250.00) from the very same backers back when she was still a senator from New York.

Now I opposed any legislation concerning net neutrality back then (2007) and still not in favor of the government getting their grimy hands on what I post here for free.  So educate yourself as to what their overall objectives are (word clue: control) and don't let this turn into a "I-told-you-so" situation.  ~ Norman E. Hooben
  
ps: Obama is on Hillary's side of the table on this issue. (word clue: control ...there! now you got it!)

The Net Neutrality Debate All On One Page

by Erick Schonfeld on Aug 31, 2008

Are you confused about Net Neutrality? Who isn’t? Some people argue it is necessary for continued innovation on the Internet, and point to Comcast’s bandwidth metering as a sign of things to come. Others claim that it is unnecessary regulation that will create unintended consequences in its wake. Opposing Views, the debate site that pits experts against each other to argue the pros and cons of the big questions of the day (read our launch review), last night put up a page on Net Neutrality. The page lays out the arguments pro and con for Net Neutrality, and then links to fuller arguments.
Marshaling the arguments for Net Neutrality are the Save The Internet Coalition, the Open Internet Coalition, and Public Knowledge. (It’s a freedom of speech issue, the ISPs are quasi-monopolies that cannot be trusted, innovation on the Web is at stake). Arguing against are the Cato Institute and Hands Off The Internet (it’s a technical issue best left to engineers, the cost of Net Neutrality will be passed onto consumers, regulation will backfire). Readers are then encouraged to vote on who is winning the argument, an add their own points of view, which can be elevated to the main discussion page.
Here’s a sample of some of the back-and-forth. The Open Internet Coalition argues that it is a fundamental principle:

Too often, the discussion of why we need to protect the open Internet degenerates into a stale debate about regulation versus the free market. In fact, it’s impossible for innovation to continue apace without some basic rules of the road to protect that innovation.
The open Internet was the principle leading the development of the Internet as the first open global communications network. And it helped drive the development of a host of Internet applications like Facebook, YouTube, and Skype. There would have been no motivation for the developers of these applications to have expended time, effort, and in some cases, their own financial security, in pursuit of their vision if they weren’t guaranteed their inventions would have been able to work over any Internet connection.

The Cato Institute warns of the difficulty of enforcing fuzzy concepts:

it’s important to remember that network neutrality is fundamentally a technical principle. Like any technical principle, it is fuzzy at the edges.
. . . Leading network neutrality proposals contain numerous ambiguities that would create uncertainty for everyone in the Internet industry. Here’s just one example: the most prominent network neutrality proposal of the 2006 congressional session, known as Snowe-Dorgan, defined a “broadband service provider” as “a person or entity that controls, operates, or resells and controls any facility used to provide broadband service to the public, whether provided for a fee or for free.” Does this mean that the owner of a coffee shop with a WiFi connection would be subject to FCC regulation of its firewall configuration? One would hope not, but that’s what the language seems to suggest. The same point can be made with respect to hotels, Internet cafes, airports, and even individuals who choose to make their home WiFi connection available to their neighbors.

Where do you stand on Net Neutrality? Go debate.