I have commented before on the raging INTERnet-neutrality debate and how closely allied it is to the issue of LOCAL net neutrality - the focus of the OPLAN Foundation.

Well last week I was reminded again of just how much double talk some of the major vested interests in the telecoms and cable sector are engaged in on this issue. 

We already know the totally warped "let the market be free" argument of the likes of AT&T and Verizon who want to charge service providers and the likes of Yahoo and Google for use of the Internet on a differential basis - i.e. destroy 'net neutrality'.  The fallacy of their 'free-market argument' being that these major corporations would never exist as they do today, as vertically integrated behemoths, had they not been created as such through a century of state intervention, nationalisation and more recently, arbitrary sector-specific regulation.  Had the market been allowed to deploy the digital technologies of abundance free from state intervention and vested interest protection - then the likes of AT&T, Verizon, France Telecom and BT would have left the stage long ago.

Anyway, as we all know, given the fact that they are still with us, it is not surprising that large companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft having been denied the power of the free market to ensure the continued neutrality of the internet - feel forced to turn to legislators to prevent the artifically long-lived dinosaurs from messing it up.  "Foul" cry the dinosaurs - "...government stay out of this - let the market decide!".  Some market, I say!...