No Justice for Net Neutrality

Anyone surprised?

The Justice Department on Thursday said Internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority Web traffic.

The agency told the Federal Communications Commission, which is reviewing high-speed Internet practices, that it is opposed to "Net neutrality," the principle that all Internet sites should be equally accessible to any Web user.

Several phone and cable companies, such as AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp., have previously said they want the option to charge some users more money for loading certain content or Web sites faster than others.

The Justice Department said imposing a Net neutrality regulation could hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks. It could also shift the "entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers," the agency said in its filing.

Bush's justice department - responsible for such great hits as domestic spying, Guantanamo, firing prosecutors who disagreed with the Republican party line and more! - is against a provision that makes it illegal for big business to squeeze money out of you and helps to control the gates of information flow. Hmm...

Sorry, little blog and blog-readers! You'll just have to go to CNN instead!

That last paragraph is also laughable for so many reasons.

See this Slashdot comment for a pretty good explanation of why the anti-net neutrality folks are full of it.