The New York Times has a fantastic editorial today endorsing net neutrality legislation.

Says the Times

This sort of discrimination would interfere with innovation. Many major Web sites, like eBay or YouTube, might never have gotten past the start-up stage if their creators had been forced to pay to get their content through. Content discrimination would also allow I.S.P.’s to censor speech they do not like — something that has already begun. Last year, Verizon Wireless refused to allow Naral Pro-Choice America to send text messages over its network, reversing itself only after bad publicity.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is starting to take a more proactive stance on net neutrality. Last week the CRTC sent a letter to Bell Canada and the Canadian Association of Internet Providers aksing them to prove the oft-uttered contention that their tubes are plugged up by heavy traffic. It’s good to see that someone in Canada takes net neutrality seriously. Now if only Industry Minister Jim Prentice could take a lesson from them. 

Craig Aaron of Freepress.net speaks about why journalists should be concerned about net neutrality.
An interview with Craig Aaron

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MP Charlie Angus speaks out against the pending Canadian copyright bill, which, as Cory Doctorow points out is based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act– a law which criminalizes things like unlocking an iPhone and places tighter controls on “fair use.”

The nation’s third largest ISP, Charter Communications, announced they will start tracking their customers’ web surfing in order to create targeted advertising. That means the ISP will have a complete record of a customers entire web history, a prospect that has drawn considerable criticism and the interest of Congress.

This idea isn’t a new one as ISPs have been experimenting with this sort of technology for years. Last year, the Canadian ISP Rogers started injecting their own ads over top of webpages like Google.

For those looking for a primer on the net neutrality issue, Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia, has a FAQ that explains. You should also check out his book, which is a pretty good read.

A pro-net neutrlaity group in Canada is rallying at Paliment Hill on May 27 to push lawmakers to move on the issue. Those looking to join can sign up here. The issue seems to be gaining more traction every week. The CRTC has recieved hundreds of letters in support of net neutrality which you can read on their website.

We all know the internet is not a big dump truck, thanks to Sen. Ted Stevens. But what if it were an car. Well, Rocketboom considers the possibility to explain why net neutrality is so important.

There’s another net neutrality bill on the floor of the US House. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) proposed the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act (H.R. 5994) this week, a bill that would make net neutrality “an antitrust matter.”

The problem with the bill is that it doesn’t outright ban discrimination against certain types of data. In fact, it would allow an ISP to restrict, say, BitTorrent traffic. However, under the proposed law, if an ISP decides to restrict BitTorrent it has to restrict all torrent traffic equally. This is hardly a step in the right direction since it gives legal protection to ISPs to tell people how they can and cannot access data.

One of the frequent arguments the ISPs make for reshaping net traffic is that file sharing usage has skyrocketed, placing a huge demand on the the ISP’s ability to provide bandwidth to all. So how much bandwidth does file sharing eat up? Wired did an analysis of what turns out to be a very difficult question to answer.

One interesting thing they found is that peer-to-peer traffic may have decreased thanks to free, http-based services like Hulu and YouTube. This undermines their central idea that the people eating up the bandwidth are all thieves engaging in illegal activity.