The New York Times' Adam Cohen had a great piece on Net Neutrality in the paper on May 28.
The Title tells it all: “Why the Democratic Ethic of the World Wide Web May Be About to End.”
Cohen discusses the benefits of today's open Internet architecture, and compares it to the version of the Internet suggestd by the telecom industry:
“A tiered Internet poses a threat at many levels. Service providers could, for example, shut out Web sites whose politics they dislike. Even if they did not discriminate on the basis of content, access fees would automatically marginalize smaller, poorer Web sites.
He characterizes the opponents of Net Neutrality this way:
The companies fighting net neutrality have been waging a misleading campaign, with the slogan “hands off the Internet,” that tries to look like a grass-roots effort to protect the Internet in its current form. What they actually favor is stopping the government from protecting the Internet, so they can get their own hands on it.”
See the whole article here
Meanwhile, the Times isn't the only institution warning about the dangers of a tiered Internet. EBay's Chairman Meg Whitman has also been busy, emailing customers as well.