said by DoRight :

Everyone enjoy your 4th with high gas prices, a downward stock market and the highest unemployment rate in 5 years...

Vint Cerf said this week that he never intended to seriously propose that the U.S. government should nationalize the Internet. But he does think the Internet is seriously broken, with an economic system that discourages competition and innovation and encourages harmful monopolistic practices.

Given the lack of alternatives, consumers have no choice when Internet service providers block some applications. ISPs will likely try to filter traffic further, blocking access to specific applications and companies to increase their own profits.

The solution: Net neutrality, Cerf said. ISPs should be required to carry all traffic without filtering some of it selectively.

I asked Cerf about a couple of the objections to net neutrality raised by opponents. One is that the new generation of multimedia and video applications -- including YouTube, owned by Cerf's employers at Google -- are overwhelming the Internet. Multimedia requires much more bandwidth than the text and static graphics that the networks were designed to carry.

He responded that Internet service providers should sell tiers of access -- the more you pay, the more bandwidth you get. And ISPs should be prepared to deliver the bandwidth they promise.