[rikkus]

Governments have some control over the 'managing' and 'running' of the Internet, via TLD control, blocking, filtering, surveillance and legislation (e.g. the cookie law in EU), but even with all these in place, they're not really 'running' the Internet. If they did, there'd be no newsgroups, no torrents and no porn. They're seizing more control as time goes on, however: See the death of Net Neutrality in the US.

I'd like to see governments pledge to back off from the Internet. Unfortunately I can't see that ever happening. Forever pushing for more governance means that the non-government-approved portion will get bigger and erect more walls around it. If governments want to govern, they need to be more accepting of the 'net in its natural state and deal with it on those terms, rather than forcing citizens to choose to be on the 'light side' or 'dark side' (choose for yourself which term applies to which).

[acheron]

"Net neutrality" is the government "seizing more control". And not in some abstract way either, that is literally the goal. If it had actually "died" then that would have been a good thing, for those opposed to government control.

[crazy1van]

> "Net neutrality" is the government "seizing more control"

Good point. Telling infrastructure providers they must treat all traffic the same and telling them they must prioritize certain traffic is the same thing from a government power perspective.

Being for "net neutrality" is one thing. However, being for net neutrality and being for less government control of the internet makes no sense.

[rikkus]

Ah yes I have this wrong! I was thinking of neutrality as being a natural state of the 'net, but of course that's not necessarily so.

[jpadkins]

can you give an example of the death of net neutrality in the US?

Like it actually happening. Not a court case that rules on a hypothetical.

Also, can you cite a time when the internet did not prioritize traffic?