Have you ever stopped to think about how weird it is that a single click can deliver you to Facebook or Jim-Bob's Erotic Taxidermy Homepage with equal ease? Facebook spends millions of dollars a year to keep their servers up, while Jim-Bob pays his host about $20 a month. Despite a vast disparity in the bribe budgets of these two media titans, Verizon is forced to treat them like equals. This is what people are talking about when they mention "Net neutrality."
It's often seen as an absolute. The Way Things Are. But the FCC's first attempt at enforcing Internet neutrality didn't come until 2008. And it was a "success" in the same way our occupation of Afghanistan was a success. In other words, the FCC is still fighting, and absolutely nothing has been decided. Verizon's arguing right now for the freedom to add tollbooths and fast lanes to the Internet. If the D.C. Circuit Court sides with their millions of dollars in lawyers, only the Supremes will be left to stand for our freedom to view SwingingCartoonDicks.org as easily as the Huffington Post.
Cracked's future rests upon their sequined bosoms.
The end of Net neutrality is the tech industry's equivalent of erectile dysfunction. It's going to happen one day, and all the Viagra Google can buy won't stop the inevitable. There's money to be made in treating the Internet the way we treat physical property. Why shouldn't Walmart or Amazon.com be able to pay for better "real estate"? It isn't right that rich people have to browse in the same filthy tubes as gutter punks with cracked iPhones. The moneyed among us should be able to pay (and charge) for a better Internet experience.