Net Neutrality

The Obama Administration's FCC has just setup a website in which it comes out in favor of net neutrality. Net neutrality basically says that an internet service provider cannot limit bandwidth depending on what it is (e.g. video downloads cannot be slower than text). ISP's argue that some of these forms of information should be limited, since a free for all would make it slower for all users.

This may be one case of the government undoing a wrong that it has created. Normally I would be all for a free market, which in this case would be to argue that the ISP's have the right to limit traffic on their network. However in this case the ISP's are not a free market; generally you are limited to 1 or 2 choices of who will provide your broadband. In my condo, I am limited to Cox Communications and Verizon DSL (not even FIOS). So this is a monopoly or duopoly situation, usually setup by some local government.

The thought was, if the government gave someone a stranglehold on the market, that would entice the provider to divvy up cash to build the network. They were mostly right. So since the government basically gave these ISP's entire swaths of the country, I think it makes sense that the government can tell them what to do with it. And given how slow the US broadband is compared to the rest of the world, I think that net neutrality makes sense at the moment.