The fact that you’re reading this means that you’re a user of The Internet. How would you feel if your shopping, emailing, video watching, porn surfing, and general internet usage was metered, measured, and charged back to you by corporations? Yeah, I wouldn’t like it either, which is why Net Neutrality is vital. Lawrence Lessig happens to agree; so much so that he decided to have a little chat about it with the FCC.

The concept is this: certain corporations would like to do away with the freedom afforded by the internet. They’d like to regulate who can use which network with what equipment. They’d like to charge you extra for access to Google, even more for access to YouTube. They want to govern communication and the flow of information.

Examples of this impending demise of neutrality can already been seen. Comcast actively throttles the BitTorrent protocol. Broadband providers offer tiered service, promising increased speeds for more money which lays the groundwork for an a la carte style of usage (i.e. Google, Yahoo, and YouTube are free, but MySpace is gonna cost you…)

This is a critical issue for our society. To take away network neutrality means to take away the freedom for business to thrive and the freedom for people to communicate. I’d love to see the day when this is properly addressed by our governemnt, but this is in no way limited to just the US, but to the entire world. The advent of the internet is seen by many to be positive step in the social evolution of humanity. We need to make sure that evolution isn’t sold to the highest bidder.

And in a related note, I’d like to take a moment to gush about Lessig’s presentation. He’s the kind of guy that I’d like manning the PowerPoint during my eulogy!