So those who know me know that I, like many others, am a single-issue voter. I voted last presidential election based on whether or not the candidate supports net neutrality. What is net neutrality? Good question. The fundamental, basic net neutrality is that service providers do not hinder traffic selectively on their network. If that sounds like what we have currently, it is, with a few minor exceptions. For example, I can't send email on port 25 because I have AT&T as a service provider. Why have they blocked port 25? I don't know.

Many people who are up in arms to create legislation to formalize net neutrality rather than allow for the possibility of it going away are all about the peer-to-peer file sharing. Personally, I like to communicate on the Internet. The worst-case scenario net neutrality proponents share is communication with sites outside your network being impossible. Like if you have from those left-handed jerks at Sunflower Broadband, you couldn't visit a site hosted on a static IP from AT&T.

Most of the arguments against net neutrality are insane and not based in reality. The only semi-valid argument that I have seen is that it forces companies to do something with their equipment which is against their interest. To that I say, tough breaks. If all you have is three providers in an area, and one of them charges you to not have television, and another is apparently crap, and another is very aggressive about selling phone service... well, I don't buy that you can just go get your data from another spigot. These companies have a neat oligopoly and that isn't conducive to real competition. One other argument I see is that it would be against ISPs interests to kill the Internet, so it doesn't need protection. That is a half-truth. The half that is true is that it would be against ISP interests to kill the Internet. That doesn't mean they wouldn't do it. They are already trying to kill the Internet, would they stop because it wasn't illegal to do so?

As a side note, that totally wrong letter to the editor yesterday which totally missed the point of HR 3221 had about the same level of confused information about what is going on as opponents of net neutrality. There, I see occasional to-do about the government squelching competition. People are complaining that because private companies can no longer participate in a federal program that they can't compete in the student loan market. Which is totally insane and not true. There are private student loans. Certainly, they probably won't offer loans to people who haven't had them before at reasonable rates with reasonable repayment terms like the federal government does, but then again that's why we have the programs in the first place.

People who feel the need to defend lending institutions and communications monopolies make me crazy. Yes, it was and is the government's fault they are huge and idiotic. But it is also the government that does trust busting to promote an actual market instead of one artificially manipulated by a few companies.

I forgot to mention a few other things: The "series of tubes" quote is important. Read the wikipedia entry on it. I like how the WSJ tries to dismiss him as an aberration. "'The Internet is a Series of Tubes!' spawned a new slogan that became a rallying cry for Net neutrality advocates. ... Stevens's overly simplistic description of the Web's infrastructure made it easy for pro-neutrality activists to label the other side as old and out-of-touch." BECAUSE THEY ARE.

Guess who else is against net neutrality? Sam "Effin" Brownback. Cosponsored a bill amendment to prevent funding for the FCC to enforce net neutrality. And that makes me so angry.

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