Somebody Please Explain Net Neutrality in a Way That’s Going to Make Me Give a Damn

In the past year I’ve received something like 10,000 items in my RSS feed about net neutrality. I’ve ignored every single one of them. I feel bad about that—I like to think I’m a good citizen about these things, and every post I’ve scanned and then ignored gave me the impression that this is something Very Important. But holy crap is the Wikipedia page on the subject long. I was hoping that maybe Rock the Net: Musicians for Network Neutrality, a new CD from the D.C.-based Future of Music Coalition might help me out. True enough, it paints a not-so-pretty picture. (Disclosure: Casey Rae-Hunter, a CP contributor, works with FoMC, but didn’t nudge me to write about the disc.) Here’s the indie-rock-pocalypse that’s coming: “The big telecom companies want to charge content providers a fee for the faster deliver of their sites. It’s simply another corporate shell game—do business our way, or don’t do business at all.”

OK, though I get a little skeptical about rhetoric like “corporate shell game.” And Wilco’s no help: The lyrics to “Impossible Germany,” a live version of which is on the CD, are as abstract as anything Jeff Tweedy’s coughed up. So I gather that it’s a corporate battle—except when it isn’t. Help!

Photo from a Canadian net neutrality rally by JasonWalton.