The principle of “Internet neutrality” could be stated as “All traffic on the Internet is to be routed with equal priority.” I would add “…regardless of its content, its type or how much money is being paid to route the traffic.” Proposals from the Internet backbone providers ask that they be allowed to charge more money for certain types of traffic (Voice Over IP, for instance) or on the type of provider (charge more money to Google) on the pretext that this will permit them to offer better and faster routing for these organizations.

Reading behind the lines, I think this is a boldfaced power grab. They simply want to “share” in the revenues being generated by VoIP services and by Google and to do that, the carries want to charge these guys more money for their traffic on the pretext of supplying better service for the increased price.

The reaction, of course, out here in the rest of the world, is that this would relegate those orgs that cannot pay the premium fees to “the back of the bus.” In other words, the folks paying for better routing would get essentially what they get now, and everyone else (who doesn’t have the money to pay) would get the bandwidth that’s left over. [My words.]

See this article on Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Internet Neutrality Vital for Free Expression.

Looks like the search engines google.cn and yahoo.cn have gotten even more aggressive in terms of blocking access to “unauthorized” or “illegal” sources of information for Chinese-language searchers. Most of the recent attention on the Chinese censorship issue has been focused on Google.cn, but it turns out that Yahoo.cn may be even more in tune with the Chinese party line!

See this report from Reporters Without Borders entitled Yahoo! clear worst offender in censorship tests on search engines.