I’ve mentioned before that the openness of the internet is in serious danger, if the U.S. and Telco succeed in their tiered pricing proposals.

David Bollier recently updated the events surrounding the topic and recommends the following paper by Public Knowledge:

Executive Summary

The genius of the Internet is its promise of unlimited accessibility. With very limited exceptions, any consumer with an Internet connection and a computer can visit any web site, attach any device, post any content, and provide any service.

While the openness of the Internet is universally praised, it is no longer guaranteed, at least for broadband services. Recent Supreme Court and FCC rulings define broadband networks as unregulated “information services,� which means that the operators of broadband networks are no longer under any legal obligation to keep their networks open to all Internet content, services and equipment.

Broadband providers now have the same authority as cable providers to act as gatekeepers: the network owner can choose which services and equipment consumers may use. Network operators can adopt conflicting and proprietary standards for the attachment of consumer equipment, can steer consumers to certain web sites over others, can block whatever Internet services or applications they like, and make their preferred applications perform better than others.

This concern is not just theoretical — broadband network providers are taking advantage of their unregulated status. Cable operators have barred consumers from using their cable modems for virtual private networks and home networking and blocked streaming video applications. Telephone and wireless companies have blocked Internet telephone (VoIP — Voice over the Internet Protocol) traffic outright in order to protect their own telephone service revenues. Equipment manufacturers are marketing equipment specifically designed to “filter� out (i.e. block) VoIP traffic. Wireless companies often write limitations into consumers’ service agreements that have nothing to do with excessive bandwidth consumption.

The problem is likely to become worse in the near future. One telephone company executive threatened to put a stop to on-line providers that use the telephone network “for free� (even though on-line providers pay to connect to the network). Another telephone company executive openly announced that his company intends to establish a higher-priced “tier� of service reserved exclusively for content providers chosen by the network operator. This raises the concern that consumers and start-up application providers will be relegated to the “slow lane� on the information superhighway.

These examples of discrimination, which this paper shows are greater in number than the network operators like to acknowledge, are on the increase because network operators have economic incentives to discriminate. Network owners today are more than just passive providers of transmission capacity (the “conduit�); they also own and provide services, applications and equipment (the “content�). By giving their own (or their affiliated) applications and content preferential access to the network, they can extract greater profits than if they operate the network on a non-discriminatory basis.

As a result, several groups have called upon Congress to enact, or the FCC to adopt, an enforceable “Net Neutrality� rule to ensure the Internet remains open and accessible to all. Not surprisingly, the network owners object, arguing that such a policy is unnecessary and will delay their deployment of broadband technologies.

This paper analyzes the Net Neutrality debate in more detail.”