Telecom War on Net Neutrality

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"Telecommunications industry groups have attacked a new bill calling for government regulators to take a closer look at how broadband providers manage their networks," reports Kenneth Corin. "The Internet Freedom Preservation Act, introduced earlier this week by Rep. Ed Markey, the Democratic chairman of the House subcommittee on telecommunication and the Internet, could make it illegal for service providers to block or degrade traffic on their networks. Its introduction revisits the contentious debate over Net neutrality, which has industry groups championing the free market and warning that government intervention threatens to choke off growth and innovation in the Internet economy." (As an example of the kind of "innovation" they have in mind, PC World magazine warned recently that consumers should "get ready for a crackdown on broadband use" in which "Internet users may soon be charged extra for using 'too much' bandwidth or cut off from using some bandwidth-hungry software applications.")