What is the Human Factor in Net Neutrality?

A friend of a friend recently asked me for help in describing Net Neutrality in order to get a comment published in a local Bay Area news site that focuses on unearthing graft, greed, and corruption in city and county politics. There’s a great comment on the front page that I want to quote:
Democracy is a continuing experiment that will fail in the absence of an informed electorate that exercises the right to vote. Election results are seldom to everyone’s liking but since all have agreed to abide by the result even if not the one they advocated, society continues to function in an orderly fashion. Most of the population continues to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. A main ingredient of being well informed is the willingness to accept the right of a full expression of free speech, which in its purest essence is the belief that good speech will prevail over bad speech, and that eventually good speech will drive bad speech away.
Not only is this a beautiful sentiment on its face, but it cuts to the heart of what the Net Neutrality debate is all about. A free and open Internet not only guarantees that commerce and business will grow, but that the exchange of ideas on a global level will continue to increase at astonishing rates every moment of every day. Think about it–how awesome is it that I can write this and you can read it from all corners of the Earth?
While I don’t see an immediate end to free speech if Net Neutrality isn’t preserved, there is a clear reality that telecom companies will not only prioritize services to higher-paying customers (and is willing to write crappy faux research papers to prove its point), but will enforce control of the content they favor as well. As I’ve previously written, AT&T is absoulutely not to be trusted when it comes to the rights of its customers, and given that it controls the vast breadth of the American telecommunications landscape, who else will you trust? Verizon? Sprint? Qwest?
We don’t have enough choices in the market to simply say “I’ll take my business elsewhere.” This is the fundamental end result of a monopoly–when there’s only a few companies that control many outlets, you have to fight for your access at every step of the path. Matt Stoller posted a great interview with Free Press' Ben Scott wherein he discusses how the locked iPhone/AT&T contract is emblematic of how AT&T wants to handle the internet.
The government has been little to no help in this regard, with the Federal Trade Commission issuing a massive and ponderous report that basically boiled down to "We should trust the markets and not interfere. The FCC, which under current chair Kevin Martin has proven itself an ardent foe of net neutrality and a friend to telecoms everywhere, has been forced to reevaluate its position under grilling from congress and a massive grassroots public campaign. The FCC is concluding its solicitation of comment for the issue this week, so your best bet is to contact your Congressman and Senator and let them know how important this is to our country’s economic and political future.
The Internet is that rare mix of both government and business that works–it combines public-sector service (and tax dollars) with private innovation to create a platform for virtually anything you can think of. Not only does it empower business to thrive and create in ways we never would have imagined even twenty years ago, but it’s the ultimate tool for sharing ideas, building communities, and shrinking the global divide. Whether you’re Google or smaller blogger like me, the Internet enables you to put your name out there for anyone to listen, and your ideas to be defended or defeated by public opinion. Imagine–the marketplace of ideas, where your content is all that matters. What a concept!
And it’s a concept that I simply do not trust AT&T to protect and defend. And that means we need to stand up and fight for it.