Can ISPs block traffic for good rather than evil?

Wired has an interesting article on the net neutrality debate, in which MIT computer scientist David Clark muses the debate “is really a reaction to a coming tectonic collision between the cable industry’s traditional business model, and the movement of television onto the internet.”

Clark and his colleague David Reed, both of whom spoke at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, has some interesting and incredibly nuanced ideas about net neutrality. For instance, Wired writes,

“There is good blocking and bad blocking,” Clark said. Providers already employ anti-spam measures, negotiate traffic peering arrangements between one another, and block some ports for network management reasons. “You have to understand that there is some discrimination going on on the good side of the line.”