net neturality

Many of us supported Barack Obama during the Presidential campaign, not because we agreed with all of his positions but we agreed with many of them that were crucial. We also saw no morally viable alternative. We hope to be able to continue our support, but it will always be offered in a constructive and not unconditional spirit. We appreciate the commitmentto transparency that has characterized the transition period and we have high hopes it will continue once the Obama administration takes office. It is in this spirit we endorse and pass on these Principles for an Open Transition…
Maybe you already know about net neutrality or have heard of it. If you haven't, American Independence Day seems a particularly apt time to bring you the message, since it's all about the independence of the internet. If you read this and other blogs, you probably already value the freedom of the internet. I don't like a lot of the stuff but I do appreciate that whatever my interests or concerns or politics I can find a place on the internet that caters to it. I certainly don't want my ISP, the much and justly hated Comcast Company, or Verizon or Time Warner or any of the other corporate…
There are so many hot button issues today it's not possible to pick "the" biggest one. But certainly in the top five (unfrtunately there are 100 things in the top 5) must be "net neutrality." Essentially it is whether commercial internet service providers (like Comcast or RCN) should be allowed to give preference to certain kinds of traffic over others, in effect controlling which websites we can see and which ones we can't. Net neutrality, which is in theory what we have now, would make it mandatory that service providers be neutral in how they treat traffic. Data packets are data packets,…