The media is abuzz about net neutrality again. Again, I say, since I have talked about it before.

For those still confused about what "net neutrality" is, here's a very good definition from Wikipedia:

Network neutrality is a principle proposed for user access networks participating in the Internet that advocates no restrictions by Internet service providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and the modes of communication.

That means, no censorship or selective pass-through of content, and no unequal treatment of content providers. On the inverse, if it is ignored, internet service providers (ISPs) will be able to tier the internet like so (limited to 2 layers for simplicity):

Customers who pay extra, get premium access to sites with higher bandwidth consumption. The ones who don't, get to suffer from limited speed, limited total data downloaded per month, or whatever hare-brained scheme the ISP may come up with to convince the "regular user" to "upgrade".

I will leave the arguments over this to the politicians, but I postulate the following "solution" that a disaffected regular user may employ:

A simple proxy solution is all it takes to circumvent the whole thing. But it gets worse! Remember how torrents are a nightmare to keep a track of for people who want to track what you do with every bit of data you have? What if this proxy is actually implemented as a program that networks leechers to proxy computers, and allows the leechers to proxy high-bandwidth data through when the proxy computer is idle?

ISPs can't ban everyone who does this - IP addresses change too frequently and easily. They can't spot and block an application like this either, especially if the communications between the leecher and proxy are encrypted.

And even if it doesn't work, tiering of this sort would tick off bloggers, small and large web application providers, etc. And, if the internet is good at anything, it is definitely finding ways to combat that which it percieves as unjust.

So I wonder, do ISPs really want to open that can of worms?