Via BoingBoing:

Ed Felten has published a paper on Net Neutrality that does a great job of explaining the situation. Felten is no stranger to Internet and Technology legislation as he first caused a stir by publishing researchon how to break copy protection of music and then fighting the use of the Digital Millenium Copyright act as a means to silence him.

You should read the entire paper here.

But his first point is to me the most important:
This is party a fight to control innovation on the internet.

The companies that are fighting net neutrality are also quickly becoming content providers, not simply old order telephone companies. They are working out deals to provide content from other media companies and producing content themselves and they are seeking to insure that the content they deliver has priority over that of others. The internet has built the potention for people to create new technologies and means of communication that without a doubt disrupt the business of these companies and the control of innovation is how they plan to stop it.

Net Neutrality will be covered later this week in the next episode of Digital Citizen.