Nearly a year to the day of Senator Ted Stevens' infamous utterance (something about 'opening your mouth and removing all doubt' comes to mind) today is the last day to file your comments on net neutrality.

Friday marks the final day for citizens, corporations, and paid spinmeisters alike to file comments with government regulators on Net Neutrality, a principle that ISPs should treat internet traffic equally.  As ISPs like Comcast and AT&T increasingly offer and bundle internet video and voice services, internet activists want rules to prevent the carriers from making their services run faster on their own network than external companies.

ISPs counter that packets are doing just fine, rules will prevent them from building really fast networks and the market will sort it all out.  It's not the simplest battle, since one may be in favor of having all packets (or all kinds of similar packets like video, email, and IM) treated in the same manner, without believing that Congress should be writing rules.  The market might be good enough, or maybe strong principles from government regulators who are willing to make examples of scoflaws is enough. Or maybe even ISPs should be filtering the internet on behalf of copyright holders.

Remember this ain't so much about the ISP's controlling what packets go across their internets networks, its about others paying them for priority access to those tubes pipes.  Packets to the highest bidders.  Say No.

File your own internet in this tube, as Wired puts it.  Don't use a truck.

Link: Threat Level - Wired Blogs

Technorati Tags: series of tubes, net neutrality, congress, fcc, comments, ted stevens, not a truck

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