Neutrality vital to health of Internet

The Internet must be open and democratic, and the companies that pipe it to your house should have to treat all legal content the same. That is the concept of "net neutrality," which Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski forcefully and correctly endorsed this week.

Net neutrality means that Internet service providers cannot, for example, slow down the speed at which movies or TV shows stream from a competitor's Web site. Nor could service providers let data flow faster from sites that are willing to pay for the privilege. Enforcing net neutrality ensures the free flow of information and will prevent the evolution of a two-tiered system in which service providers could stem or speed the transmission of data based on what's good for their own business, not what's in the citizens' best interest.

Every single thing that moves across the Internet — whether it is a voice phone call, a weather forecasting application on a PC's desktop, a news headline or a deposit to an on-line bank — does so as packets of data. Net neutrality requires Internet service providers, who keep up the pipelines through which the streams of data course, simply to treat all that data the same and let it push through its pipelines at the same speed — text, a streaming video, a song, a video chat or some kind of data or application not yet conceived. Without net neutrality, Internet service providers could decide what kinds of information people can access.

This is not theoretical. Already there have been instances of ISPs trying to inhibit legitimate file-sharing and attempting to keep a company from using their pipelines for a text-messaging service. So net neutrality is necessary to let the Internet continue to evolve as the most powerful source of information the world has known.

The FCC chairman spoke of the need to make the Internet "future proof," to keep it a place where people can contribute and innovate without permission. He is right. And he took his goal one step farther to extend neutrality to wireless networks — the realm of the BlackBerry, the iPhone and portable computing devices yet to come.

His proposal would take current FCC guidelines and make them rules that can be enforced. The formal process will begin soon, and it will pit giants such as Google and Amazon — who want information to be free and fast — against some Internet service providers that want more control over how they run their networks.

In treating all data equally, net neutrality doesn't require service providers to give all users the same speed. People who want a faster connection can still be required to pay for it, just as broadband costs more than old-fashioned dial-up. It does, however, require that the data entering the pipe — or wireless connection — from the other end be treated equally. They cannot give preference to their own data or impede legal data from other sources, no matter what.

That is how the Internet became the powerful engine of change it is today. And that is how the Internet of tomorrow will become a source of information and applications that can only be imagined right now.