I'm getting really tired of reading reflexive, thoughtless nonsense in comments sections about this issue, so I wanted to clear a few things up.
The entire point of the Internet is the end-to-end principle, which is that all the communication happens between two computers between the wires, not anywhere within the wires themselves.
It was designed by the military to be distributed and highly survivable, resistant to attack on any central location to try to disable it. That's the whole point.
The current argument about net neutrality has nothing at all to do with the Internet itself, but the current infrastructure in place for delivering it. It's about who owns the wires and the towers, and who's maintaining connections between all these computers. But the thing that makes it the Internet has nothing to do with the wires at all.
If Kos wanted to, he could host Daily Kos on a roomful of computers in his basement. If you wanted to, you could host your blog or whatever on your laptop. Every modern operating system comes equipped with a web server, if you know how to turn it on, and more than enough computing power to serve up a website.
And every day, radio technology improves, extending larger and larger ranges of communication from smaller and smaller chips.
What this means, in the long run, is that eventually there will be enough computers and devices to create a network that just exists by virtue of there being enough computers and devices. Because as long as my computer can reach the servers that Daily Kos runs on, by any possible route, whether that's through Verizon's cell towers, Comcast's cable, or via piggybacking on my neighbor's wireless connection, jumping from point to point until my request gets to Daily Kos, I'll still be able to get here, regardless of any corporate or government collusion.
And frankly, our experience with the government we all worked so hard to elect should show all of us here that if we really care about freedom of speech on the Internet, we should be using tactical, not political means, to secure it.
If we leave this up to the government, some Republican troglodyte is eventually going to come along and take a s**t on all our hard work, and that's only if Max Baucus doesn't do it first. I'm not depending on them to preserve the Internet, and I hope you aren't either.
And by the way, if you really want to bitch about Google "selling out" and being "evil", you should read up on their Google Fiber proposal first. They're investing billions to create a series of high-capacity wires that will be open to any service provider that wants to use them. They're using their leverage as a giant corporation to create a radical shift in how Internet service is provided in America (largely because the Federal government is dragging its feet on this), and it is an unqualified Good Thing.
Further Reading:
http://www.fiberforcommunities.com/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
http://research.microsoft.com/...