Structure of the article is very significant. Virtually no readers get to the last paragraphs of a story. To write massive paragraphs about how those poor telcos will have to pay for internet bandwidth for freaking 8 hours of high definition video on the internet for every household -- that's insane. We're nowhere near that point yet.

As for charging the users, I actually don't think any of us are complaining about that. People pay for video on demand with their cable companies. There's no reason they should not have to pay for their 8 hours of downloads. But to fundamentally alter the groundrules of the internet -- and make sites like Crooks and Liars unpossible -- is ridiculous.

Unfortunately for the telcos, the Internet left the universities and became everyone's global network of choice, so they had to support TCP/IP over ATM. TCP/IP just isn't set up for QoS, although (if it ever takes off) IPv6 has some support with RSVP.

For those that are curious, read Andy Tanenbaum's Computer Networks 1st edition (what was expected to happen in early 90s) and 3rd edition (what actually happened).

These days btw BitTorrent traffic swamps all other forms of traffic on the Internet.

"Objective journalism" came about from a number of factors, but one of the big ones was the growth of the national news services like AP/UPI/etc that used the new telegraph system to deliver national news. These services wanted to sell their wares to Democratic and Republican newspapers, so they billed themselves as "objective" complements to the rest of the papers' offerings. It was a marketing concept and business model, essentially.

I don't know enough about the period to be definitive, but the excesses of the yellow journalism period contributed to the spread of this ethic, as did the 20th century's on-going concentration of newspaper ownership, iirc.

Generally speaking and simplifying a little too much (but only a little), it's all a marketing gimmick of the 20th century.

4 a better internet:

Please explain how net neutrality would prevent the ability of the Internet to handle HD video files.  Please be specific, and please don't confuse the question of cost with the question of how it gets paid for, though both are valid and somewhat related questions.  

I'd also be interested in the Hands Off coalition's position on communities retaining the right to build an open-access Internet, which the incumbents appear to want to stifle by endless roadblocks through legislation and litigation.  

The messages I've heard from incumbents are so mixed as to suggest none are their real motives. On one hand they say they welcome competition.  They also argue that muni-broadband projects are money losers.  But, even as they welcome competition and claim muni projects will fail, they are also desperately doing whatever they can via lobbying and litigation to block them and, after they're launched, using predatory pricing, as they have with private overbuilders.

All this suggests that what incumbents really want is an unregulated duopoly in which they can assure their financial welfare by leveraging duopoly market power in the access network, coupled with legislative control via lobbying and donations, to eliminate as much risk as possible from their business models. To achieve this, however, they must stifle the very efficient and competitive functioning of the Internet-based economy (which is too competitive for them if they had to compete as service providers on a level playing field).  

But many of us believe that this incredibly efficient and innovative Internet is key to our nation's future and far more important than the psychological and financial comfort of RBOC investors and executives.  

Pipe-owner strategies are understandable from their business perspective, but their private business needs should not drive public policy in an area as critical to our future as the Internet.

In addition to the distortion of economic efficiency and stifling of highly efficient competition, another result of proposed "access-tiering" schemes would be to stifle the exciting and important new forms of video political speech we're seeing on MyDD and other web sites.  This impact on the democratic process is vitally important and I'd like to hear from the Hands Off coalition as to their position on this.
(see: http://www.ipdemocracy.com/archives/0015 39more_on_trust_politics_internet_policy .php )

While this stifling of political discourse can occur intentionally with a clear political motive (see Sinclair Broadcasting and others in 2004 campaign; cable unwillingness to carry pro telco-video ads; Telus blocking of access by its broadband customers to the web site of a labor union with which the company was having a dispute), it can also be caused by less sinister but no less destructive tiering that would allow well-funded entities to get access to the public with slick HD-quality video messages, while less-well-funded voices cannot do so because they cannot afford the access-tiering fees.  This harms not only them, but the citizens who lack access to these views, and to the democratic process in general.

There's plenty of dark fiber still available in the long-haul portion of the network. Perhaps the solution in the access arena is for local communities to build virtually-unlimited Ethernet-based IP fiber networks, supplemented by unlicensed wireless and having these serve as "Internet public roads" within which competition and innovation can thrive.  Such a vision and a roadmap to get there is laid out in this book:  http://www.america-at-the-internet-cross roads.com . (Also see David Isenberg's "Rise of the Stupid Network" for network architecture analysis
http://www.isen.com/stupid.html )

I like the idea of "Hands off the Internet."  But shouldn't we also consider the hands of companies that have so much market power that they can change the Internet into something that is no longer the Internet as understood by its creators, service providers and users?

If your meaning of "Hands off the Internet" is "Hands off the companies who, by virtue of owning the only two access pipes,have their hands on the Internet's throat and have motives to squeeze," then your definition of "the Internet" doesn't gel with that of the people who invented it, who provide services on it, and who use it in their daily lives.

Your group's (at least Mike McCurry's) arguments that the Internet has never been regulated by government don't hold water. The evidence seems quite clear that, in its early days, the common-carrier rules governing dial-up networks were key to the evolution of a viable Internet ecosystem and the many service providers that have found a place within it.

The issue at hand here is whether, as we move from the era of e-mail, IM, static web pages and other low-bit-rate services to an era of streaming HD video, whether that open and competitive ecosystem will be allowed to thrive or whether the pipe-owners will assert their preference to turn the Internet into the cable-TV system of tomorrow.

Perhaps some people would prefer a cable TV model to a video-capable Internet model as our nation's "media" future.  In key respects, the net neutrality and muni-broadband debates are a referendum on which model our country prefers.

One road leads to enhanced democracy in the political space and enhanced competition and innovation in the economic space.  

Given the fact that three of the four RBOCs (which will soon become only 2), provided the government with billions of phone records on questionable legal grounds, there's evidence to suggest that the other road leads in the general direction where the interests of consolidated corporate power unite with federal government power, which is one working definition of fascism.  

At its core, this system is similar to Communism, except that the government doesn't directly control the large corporate entities that control essential economic resources, they just work together to retain mutually beneficial control, as well as control of media outlets and messages.  

Both systems lead to corrupt and inefficient cronyism, which appears to be a salient characteristic of the current Administration and Washington in general.  Another characteristic they share is a media system that does not serve the needs of a healthy democracy, but instead engenders distrust, apathy, fear and confusion.  This is arguably the state of today's mass media, which stands in sharp contrast to the vibrant debate and inherently democratic (small d) exchanges found within the Internet.

The open Internet is a powerful platform for countering these trends toward corporate and government aggregation of power, but only to the extent it remains open.  

"Hands Off" needs to be applied to ALL entities that can exert too much control over the open Internet, not just government.