At the request of a colleague, I am re-posting something I posted for the online ADTED 460 class I took this Fall about Net Neutrality. I hope that the analogies I use to describe the issue make sense and that they are close to accurate in their depiction of the problem:

I’ll give an analogy to describe how I think an internet without net neutrality will look. The mediums of radio and television as they exist today are something like what a non-neutral internet would look like. Yes, there are a lot of choices for the consumer, but it is still largely controlled by corporations who have the capital to provide the equipment to produce for these mediums and the licensing from the FCC. The FCC is in place because these mediums are inherently limiting – there are only so many frequencies available to broadcast on, so some regulation is in order. The internet has no such regulation or restriction because it is really not needed – there is nothing limiting how big it can get and how many “nodes” (Web sites) can exist. Also no one “owns” the internet. I’m going to attach a sort of sad attempt at a line diagram I’ve done to illustrate the difference. The first diagram shows how I envision radio and television. There are a finite number of nodes and each one radiates out to the consumers. My diagram of the internet, though, shows all nodes connected in a web-like fashion (that’s why we call it the Web), with no node having any particular importance over any other. Also there is no limit to the number of nodes. What I think eliminating net neutrality will do is start to make the internet diagram look more like the first diagram. What will happen for us as consumers is that we’ll have no trouble connecting to corporate Web sites but we’ll see slow or no connections to anything else. Penn State’s lead IT administrator recently testified before Congress in support of Net Neutrality. You can read the text of his speech here: http://live.psu.edu/story/18325