Hmmm, I Can't Get that on MY Internet!

I hope everyone is paying attention to what Congress is doing with the Telecommunications Act. The big telecom companies are saying some things that have organizations like Common Cause, Center for Digital Democracy, and ALA (oh, never mind, my mistake) expressing concern about.

Network neutrality refers to the concept that your Internet Service Provider shouldn't have anything to say about what you can access over the Internet or what applications you use once you're there.

The current language in the new telecommunications act states that certain classes of Internet providers "may not unreasonably" impair, interfere, restrict or limit applications or services." Of course there's no definition of what "unreasonable" means and I'm not sure what "certain classes of Internet providers means either. Common Cause has launched a Keep the Internet Free and Open campaign to make sure the new telecommunications act is stronger on network neutrality.

Tiered access is related to this network neutrality thing. The concept here is that ISPs could make deals with certain content providers so that their webpages are optimized. So, for example, going to Yahoo.com would be lickity split but, say, lii.org, might load reeeaaaaalllll slow since they weren't paying out the big bucks for the top tier service. James Surwiecki describes the issues very well in his New Yorker piece entitled Net Losses.

Lawrence Lessig explains that the reason we've managed to have network neutrality so far is simply because we originally got on the Net via our phone lines which were regulated by common carriage, the telephone version of network neutrality. But now that we are getting on the Internet via cable and broadband companies who are not telephone companies, the jig could be up.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) is trying his best to see that this doesn't happen. He's sponsored S 2360, the Internet non-Discrimination Act of 2006. It would prevent tiered access and enforce network neutrality. But there are no co-sponsors of this bill.

To be fair to ALA, they do support S 2360. I found out by digging deep into the bowels of the ALA site. I'd like to see more action from information professionals on this topic. What tier do you think you're library website would be on?