Did Regulators Break the Internet or Did They Save It?

By FARHAD MANJOO, NYT
May 16, 2014, 5:04 pm

Ten years from now, we’ll look back on this week as the moment federal regulators broke the Internet as we know it.

Or we will look back on it as just another time they managed to push through a fragile, hodgepodge compromise that kept the Internet just barely functioning fairly, at least until the next telecommunications giant initiates a court case that once again casts the future of the network in doubt.

In other words, whatever happens, it’s hard to see a really great outcome to the proposal on so-called network neutrality rules that the Federal Communications Commission moved to adopt this week.

Network neutrality is the most important sleep-inducing topic around. At its heart is a question that anyone who uses the Internet ought to care about: Will the future of the Internet resemble that of cable television, a service in which business deals between content companies and providers influence which content you see on your devices?

(More here.)