Net Neutrality

On the way to work yesterday, Thom Hartman had a guest on his show who was representing the interests of the telecom companies who own the Internet infrastructure on the topic of Net Neutrality. As a computer professional I listened to the topic with some interest, and it prompted me to give the matter some thought.

The phrase that came to mind was "Quality of Service vs. Freedom of Speech".

( The gory details... )

My take: QoS vs. FoS is, as so many political issues are, a false dilemma. On balance, Net Neutrality, properly defined, is a really good idea but it really ought not to be a law. And rather than say "all bits are created equal", a more useful definition of Net Neutrality is "all sources are created equal", with some carefully crafted exceptions for bad behavior.