The Net Neutrality fight is going to be easy to win, but irritating to fight.

Read a sample of the right-wing blogosphere's blitzkrieg against Net Neutrality and you too will conclude that they simply don't understand what Net Neutrality is. Not only do they not get it, they consistently fuck it up in the same way. Don't think this is a coincidence. There's a herd of conservative bloggers who feed from the same trough and fertilize the blogosphere with identical bullshit.

Take this passage from ill-informed blogger MADISONCONSERVATIVE's hit piece against Net Neutrality (note how similar this argument is to a FreedomWorks blog post I blasted a few weeks back)

For those unfamiliar with what net neutrality is, I’ll try to explain in a more coherent way. Internet providers like Comcast, Charter, Road Runner, etc. sell access to the internet through their networks. If you subscribe to their services, everything you access on the internet first goes through their private property. Now, theoretically, as it is their private property, and you’re choosing to pay to use it, they can make the rules on what you can access. However, historically, they haven’t. Why? Well, they know that if you can’t access what you want using their service, you can go find another.

...the proposed solution is to have the government dictate what private internet providers can or cannot do with their private property

This is not Net Neutrality. Private internet providers are already controlling their networks. If you want faster service, you can buy a more expensive plan with access to increased internet bandwith. The argument MADISONCONSERVATIVE is making on behalf of the telecommunication companies is that they should have it both ways - control over the consumer of internet content and control over the producers of it.

What MADISONCONSERVATIVE wants is for Internet service providers to be allowed to control what content can be requested from the internet. Right-wingers love to sing the praises of the founders of the United States, so I'll put this in terms they'll understand... This is a fundamental betrayal of the founding principles of the internet.

The founder of the Internet is Tim Berners-Lee. Here's what he has to say on the matter:

"When, seventeen years ago, I designed the Web, I did not have to ask anyone's permission. The new application rolled out over the existing Internet without modifying it. I tried then, and many people still work very hard still, to make the Web technology, in turn, a universal, neutral, platform. It must not discriminate against particular hardware, software, underlying network, language, culture, disability, or against particular types of data.

Anyone can build a new application on the Web, without asking me, or Vint Cerf, or their ISP, or their cable company, or their operating system provider, or their government, or their hardware vendor.

It is of the utmost importance that, if I connect to the Internet, and you connect to the Internet, that we can then run any Internet application we want, without discrimination as to who we are or what we are doing."

Net Neutrality regulations are nothing more than a means to preserve the Internet as we've always known it - as an open platform from which anybody can innovate. Any attempt to argue otherwise is merely an effort to mislead on behalf of the telecommunication industry.

However, if MADISONCONSERVATIVE and his right-wing friends want to continue revealing their ignorance on the topic of Net Neutrality by arguing private property rights, they should feel free to do so. Maybe when conservatives are done shilling for the telecommunication industry's Net Neutrality interests, they can argue for Greyhound's right to not just run a bus service, but their right to determine where certain types of people can sit.