No Neutral Ground in Net Debate

No Neutral Ground in Net Debate - New York Times: "ACCORDING to Arianna Huffington, the use of banal, insipid language could spell doom for the Internet. It is not badly written blogs Ms. Huffington is worried about, but the concept "Net neutrality." Congress is debating whether to block Internet service providers from favoring some content providers over others. So, in theory, Time Warner or Verizon could prefer Yahoo over Google, or vice versa (or either of those over an upstart) by giving them more bandwidth in exchange for cash. The preferred sites would then run faster on PC's than those that do not pay.

Last week, Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, introduced the Network Neutrality Act of 2006, a bill backed by Amazon, Microsoft and other Web companies, as well as disparate interests like the Gun Owners of America and the liberal group MoveOn.org. Proposed legislation that could change the nature of how the Internet operates should be getting a lot more attention, Ms. Huffington wrote. And if it did, it would be instantly squashed."