Congress Considers E-Enclosure

Lindsay Beyerstein on proposed legislation that threatens to change the internet for the worse:

Phone companies must treat all calls equally, regardless of where they come from, where they're going, or what the callers are saying. Historically, the same non-discrimination policy also covered Internet communications.

Now, a handful of giant telecom companies and their allies in Congress are on the verge of abolishing net neutrality for broadband internet. (Video)

Art Brodsky explains:

The telephone companies, which carried all of the Web traffic until relatively recently, had to treat all of their calls alike without giving any Web site or service favored treatment over another.

(Matthew Yglesias also writes on the issue in The American Prospect.)