A friend of mine just forwarded an article titled “How Net Neutrality Rules Could Undermine the Open Internet”
Basically Net Neutrality advocates are now worried that bringing the FCC in to help enforce Neutrality will set a legal precedent allowing wide-reaching control over other aspects of the Internet. For example, some form of content control extending into gray areas.
Let’s look at the history of the FCC for precedents.
The FCC came into existence to manage and enforce the wireless spectrum, essentially so you did not get 1000 radio/tv stations blasting signals over each other in every city. A very necessary and valid government service. Without it, there would be utter anarchy in the airwaves. Imagine roads without traffic signals, or airports without control towers.
At some point in time, their control over frequencies got into content and accessibility mandates. How did this come about? Simply put, it is the normal progression of government asserting control over a resource. It is what it is, neither good nor bad, just a reflection of a society that looks to government to make things “right”. And like an escaped non-native species in the Hawaiian Islands, it tends to take as much real estate as the ecosystem will allow.
What I do know as a certainty, the FCC, once in the door at regulating anything on the Internet, will continue to grow in order to make things “right” and “fair” during our browsing experience.
At best we can hope the inevitable progression of control by the FCC gets thwarted at every turn allowing us a few more good years of the good old Internet as we know it. I’ll take the current Internet flaws for a few more years while I can.
For more information on non-native species invading Hawaii’s ecosystem, check out this blog, from the Kohala Watershed Partnership.
For an overview of Net Neutrality – check out this Net Neutrality for Dummies Article explaining the act’s possible effects on the everyday internet user.
For a discussion on the possible lawlessness of the FCC’s control over the internet, read this blog entitled “Is the FCC Lawless?”.
NetEqualizer News Blog 
May 23, 2013 at 3:40 PM
I think, also, the concern is that once the FCC has wrestled control over certain aspects of regulation, then it could change by decree at some time in the future depending upon political factors. In other words, I think some are worried that “net neutrality” is not a fundamental given for perpetuity, but merely decreed by the FCC for now – what happens if/when somebody new is in charge in the future, could they decree it differently?