Net Neutrality is an utter necessity for the Internet. It essentially says, “everyone on the web is free and equal,” and keeps Telecoms from becoming despotic tyrants who can tell you what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and how much you can pay them for the privilege.

So naturally, the Telecoms want to control the INternet. There are two major dangers: first, creating classes of Internet speeds; and second, the Telecoms will be able to dictate what programs you use for accessing the Internet.

The former would mean that you will pay more and get nothing in return. Anyone who refuses to pay Telecom tolls will get tossed into the slow lane; everyone else will have to pay for the privilege of not being slowed down. You, the consumer, will have to pay more for stuff you do on the ‘Net, or pay something that you get for free today. Telecoms say “we should get paid for what we give,” but they already do. Everyone pays for bandwidth, including Amazon, Google, YouTube, and Apple. And you. The Telecoms simply want to charge you more.

The latter would mean that you won’t have perfect freedom to use the apps you want to use. It means that if you want to use Skype, but your Telecom has latched onto the idea that they can ban Skype and force you to use their app instead, they can do that. And they will charge you money for it.

Essentially, the Telecoms are saying, “Trust us! We would never do any of those things!” When, of course, those things are the only reasons to kill off Net Neutrality. Of course they’re going to do those things.

The Telecoms insist that they would never censor free speech, which might also be possible if Net Neutrality were killed off. A red herring–while some complain that this might happen, it is the least of the complaints. Few believe that the Telecoms would shut off free speech when they can make money off of it instead.

Anyway, the Democrats generally support Net Neutrality, and were instrumental in keeping Republicans from killing it off last year.

Not having the GOP in Congress to do their bidding, the Telecoms have turned to the last bastion of Republican power: the White House. And as the loyally-bought politicians that they are, they have delivered: the Bush Department of Justice has delivered an Ex Parte Finding which could have been written by the Telecoms themselves–and probably was. It makes all of their lame arguments, chief among them that Net Neutrality prevents Telecoms from charging for services, and using that money to improve services and provide new high-bandwidth connections.

Which is BS, of course–they will have absolutely no obligation at all to deliver squat in exchange for killing off Net Neutrality and essentially making the Internet their private money farm. And they won’t. Just like when they promised several years ago to improve services and provide high-bandwidth connections in exchange for raising their rates. We allowed them to raise their rates, and they blew us off when it came to improving services.

The DoJ “finding” is nothing more than pure Telecom warmed-over lies, and will result in nothing but the loss of what makes the Internet valuable.

Freedom and equality is what built the Internet and made it strong. Private Enterprise with rules and control is what we had with the “Online Services” of the early 90’s, like Prodigy and CompuServe–remember when you had to pay 25 cents per email? If that had remained the rule, do you think there would have been an Internet boom? Hell, no.

But apparently the Telecoms feel that now, people are addicted to the Internet, and they can charge anything they like and people will pay.

And the Bush administration is happy to whore for them.

Here’s a fact: we already pay full price for what we get. The Telecoms will not give us anything in exchange for Net Neutrality except price hikes. And killing off Net Neutrality is nothing short of taking a public resource and giftwrapping it for giant corporations to exploit–like those public lands we all own which are given to energy companies to mine and drill and then not even pay the miniscule pittance the politicians pretend to charge them for it.

So go to this site, find out where your representatives in Congress stand, and tell them, again, exactly where they should stand.