Well, here's another point of view on this subject.
Other posters have previously pointed out that message traffic _now_ is of various priority. VOIP phone calls, for example, need a higher priority than say an FTP download.
I'm not so sure the two-tiered approach is such a bad idea.
A major problem of the Internet is content BLOAT. As soon as end users get faster speed, the web pages grew in bells and whistles to make full use of it. It's extremely rare these days to find a web page that is mostly text and usable on a slow dial up (e.g. 14.4). Indeed, even 56k dial up users find many pages too slow.
The reality is that many of these "bells and whistles" are utterly useless and just an excuse for the web programmer to play around with new features. That's fine for kids playing around with each other, but for people trying to get information and place an order, it is very wasteful. Very attractive web pages can be prepared without the datawidth bloat. We don't need pictures everywhere, a million fonts, dancing teddy bears, etc.
I hate to break this to you, but the "big wealthly" voices have always overpowered the poor, be it on the Internet or anything else. This business about the Internet being "democratic" is a myth. Here's why:
Go do a search on most topics and you'll find hundreds of thousands of hits. How can a person possibly sift through all those hits? It's impossible. If my web page is now buried at the bottom, no one will see it today, let alone in the future.
I learned long ago many p*rn sites flood the search engine indexes with common words so that they come up first in searches. Nothing has changed about that.
Some sites pay a fee to show up first on search engines. What's democratic about that?
Lastly, I suspect some business interests have their own selfish motives for pushing this "neutrality" business. Their ads, showing an old rotary telephone and the "bad old days" were quite misleading. Anyone who puts such an ad out must be questioned.
On the flip side, if someone has something really special, word will get around and people will still get to it, even if it's on the "slow side". This is true on the Internet as well as in real life. For example, if there's a really good restaurant in a lousy location, people will still seek it out and the restaurant will thrive despite the location.
Another problem that perhaps a two-tiered system address is the mass of spam and sabotage viruses. Right now their distributors make use of the free Internet. The rest of us pay dearly in costs for unneeded server space
Real life isn't "equal". Should a hospital emergency room give "equal" priority to a person with the flu vs. a person with a heart attack? Should a bank give equal treatment to a regular customer vs. a bank robber? Should the parking lot of a small store provide equal space for both automobiles and 53' tractor trailers?
As you can see, there are very legitimate reasons for disparate treatment of services and customers.
The New York Times, as does most newspapers, is selective about what advertisements it will carry (even from paying customers), as well as what news stories it runs.
One of my concerns is that extremists, who usually reflect a very tiny number of people, will get a free use of medium. If I want to stand on a soapbox in Union Square that is my right, but is the City of New York obligated to provide me with a free bullhorn? If I want to hand out leaflets on the street corner, that is my right, but is the city obligated to print and distribute them for me?
What do you think?
[public replies, please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, you do have a good point when you allude to the New York Times hypocrisy on this and other social topics. NY Times, for instance, has long been a foe of handguns, and editorialized against them on many occassions. Yet, their long-time publisher _always_ carried a handgun weapon with him when he came to work each day (in a chauffer-driven limousine, I might add). I think the way you have to understand the NY Times, they are saying "we here are special and different; we can trust ourselves to do the 'right thing', but it's the rest of you who are worrisome."Conditions must be getting sort of hard where NY Times is concerned. They give all their news away for free these days; (oh, you still pay fifty cents or a dollar if you want the print edition, to partially pay for the paper and ink) but every headline and news report they offer can be obtained for _free_ via RSS. Just look at our very own