Net Neutrality

The Internet has by far been the most revolutionary technology of the last twenty years. I remember the first time I interacted with it. It was a time when websites were fairly basic and the Internet was primarily existing at research institutions and universities. Flash forward to today and the Internets is a bustling place with commerce, press, individual spaces, social networks, and even streaming video. All of this has brought us together in many ways that people never thought of.
The problem is that with the increasing amount of applications, websites, blogs, and social networks there is more information that has to be transferred between servers and computers. More information means that more bandwidth is desired per user and when this is coupled with the increasing amount of users there is a problem for the Internet service providers (ISP). They are limited in the amount of bandwidth they can support and are unlikely to upgrade equipment at frequent intervals to increase their bandwidth. All the ISPs must maintain decent speeds in order to maintain their customer base. In order to balance all these factors the ISPs must make some tough decisions.
In the early years of the Internet content didn't need to be filtered as the amount of data was not great. Congress at some point in the 90's passed a law which would lapse in the 2000's. Our reliance on the internet as a forum for information dispersal and communication of ideas has significantly altered our society. Every major institution of politics has a website that displays plenty of information related to their business. In the next election cycle I would expect every candidate to have a facebook page and a twitter account as a requirement and not a luxury. With this increased usage the networks that we use are unable to supply the demand. The ISPs have indicated their interest in seperating the speed at which content would be delivered to the viewer and charging for the faster rate. Some of these companies have conflicts of interest in that they are parts of conglomerates with magazine, film, and television production divisions. These companies may be involved in political activities that they could effectively squash the opposition by drastically slowing their data rate. Comcast which has been caught altering the download rates of peer to peer sharing networks claims that this was done to stop illegal downloading of copyrighted material. The practical elimination of illegal activities is a benefit of the new system providers are proposing.
In my opinion it is generally better to require unfettered and unaltered access to the internet. This is what made it a tool that led to such dynamic growth of technology. Any benefits from the elimination of illegal downloading of copyrighted material and/or the banning of child pornography websites would come at a huge cost to the free and democratic society we live in. We should definitely stay away from any censorship like Australia is proposing as this sets a bad precedent for authoritarian dictatorships.