The internet costs each and every person who uses it unless they have a micro chip surgically attached. The hardware and software costs money and internet access costs money. The more money you spend the more you get.

This is not about someone else thinking for you. That is entirely up to you. What the internet can do, however, is shape the way you think based on what you read and what you read may or may not be the truth because anyone can post to the internet any damn thing they want to post.

Lies and propaganda can win or lose an election and can incite people to act or react. That goes both ways for good or for bad. For legal and illegal purposes.

You have no right to the internet. You never did. You have an agreement with your internet provider for a nominal fee and that is about it.

Either you really can't see the dangerous implications of what you're saying, or you're one of the big-government corporatists trying to keep free societies from communicating with each other, from understanding each other and from learning from each other!

"In an emergency, there has to be somewhere to turn to find out the truth when time is of the essence."

You mean like the Patriot Act, right?

Why don't you take off your mask and reveal yourself as the enemy you are to free societies everywhere?

To where would you move your business? Do you live in a place where there is a veritable cornucopia of ISPs to choose from? In my town, we have, well, two. I guess that could be considered Free Market competition.

You're right, we don't. Nor do we need nanny corporations doing the same, which is what will happen if the major ISPs and telcoms gain control over what you can and cannot access.

And if my ISP decides to block or charge for sites, I move my business. It's that simple.

The problem is you can buy all the widgets and digits and gadgets you want and none of them can tell you if what you're reading online is a lie or not. Your anti-spyware and your anti-virus are another must have for the avid computer user and they come with a fee. If you don't have them then it is only a matter of time before a virus or hacker destroys everything you have worked for in your system and there is not a damn thing you can do about it once it happens.

That is the problem with an open internet. Anyone can spam you, phish you, dis you, lie to you or any other number of nasty things and then it is up to you to sort through all the bull crap to find out the truth. Anyone can post on the internet and no one takes the lies off. It simply perpetuates falsehoods and those same old dumb e-mails go round and round to forward to 50 of your friends about crap that is as far from the truth as it could be fly around and around the internet because there are no internet police.

Without structure and order the internet will become unreliable. In an emergency, there has to be somewhere to turn to find out the truth when time is of the essence. If a hacker gets access to information that can steal the identities of a continent, then there has to be a way to shut them off so they cannot profit from that information.

Without some mechanism in place, a disaster is just around the corner on the cyber curve ahead.

There's nothing "liberal" about Net Neutrality. It just means your internet provider is not allowed to mess with what you can reach online, plain and simple as that.

The government regulated "leveled playing field" results in shared suffering. Such would be the case for neutrality - more control, less quality, less freedom, resulting in less access due to less competition. Same liberal philosophies, same results.

If this is only about guarantee of bandwidth for small users, then allocate the bandwidth, but leave out all of the legal mumbo jumbo just like in the health care bill that passed under the fence unnoticed.

It's just like the Interstate Highway System. Should you have the "right" to do whatever you want on the highway? Not when it infringes on my rights to not have an idiot doing whatever they want. Same concept: allowing them to do whatever they want infringes upon my rights to not be screwed by greedy corporations who have already proven on several occasions they can't be trusted.

AT&T was broken up once for unfair business practices, then the government let them reform and they have already begun it again.

If there was true competition in the broadband marketplace, I would gladly ask the government to stay out of this. However, in most cases, people have access to one or maybe two broadband providers. If you do not like what your provider is doing, you have little or no choice in alternate providers.

It is for this reason that the FCC needs to regulate the broadband providers, to protect us from the abuses of the corporations. And before you think the existing laws are good enough, just look at the news about Google and Verizon signing a preferential deal. Then look at Comcast suing the FCC over the FCC fining them for actively, purposely manipulating Peer 2 Peer packets. And guess what? Comcast won the lawsuit.

No, the current laws are not good enough.

And who would you rather trust: the corporations (Telecom and Cable companies) who put greed above all else or the FCC, who has usually done a fair job of trying to be reasonable with their rules. Heck, the FCC seems to be more willing to listen to the people than our own congressmen.

When we talk about government, we have to realize that we are the government, and if we discover government censorship, we can change it. Now yes, it might take a whole two years until the next elections, but if a large enough number of citizens start to vehemently voice their opinion change will most likely come quicker than that.

On the other hand, if we have a telecom company doing the same, we have no control over it. All we can do is leave, but in an industry like communications, where there is normally one major provider for a certain area, if you leave you're choosing to go without internet. Also the government can already shut down internet sites if it so pleases, so this does not give the government any more power.

All this does is let the government set up a not for profit infrastructure where each and every internet site is able to exist.

I suspect the very motives for the government wanting to get involved.

When I worked in the telecom industry after the at&t breakup, I learned that at&t still collected millions of dollars on rental phones as far back as the 50's when rentals were the only way to get a phone. They never told the consumer they could simply buy a phone and end the rental fees on their bills.

Occasionally, government must step in and curb big business from unfair practices. I loathe big government monitoring and meddling, but I also hate being taken advantage of or treated unfairly by big business. Educate me. Why should I not want the FCC to implement a 'net neutrality' policy?