This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, May 20, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

Our networks only free if you own them, and will network neutrality really maintain an

egalitarian internet.

Tim Lee, an adjunct scholar at the Kino Institute, comments. Okay, so I hear a description of net neutrality from the Associated Press, which was I got from the Google News website.

Network neutrality is the principle that people should be able to go where they choose on the internet without

interference from network owners. Now is that a fair characterization of what

net neutrality actually means? Yeah I think so mean, it's maybe not super precise, but the basic idea is that

the internet is a medium for transmitting all kinds of information, whether it's websites,

videos, emails, etc.

And the basic idea of network neutrality

is that the owners of that infrastructure

basically transmit all the information equally

without discriminating, either based on what type of information it is, what the content of the information is, or who's transmitting it.

So, you know, small companies, big companies, individuals all have sort of an equal opportunity to translate

minimum. Now that is what we have right now. That's right. But without any form of

the feds saying this is how things have to be done. Right and and that's really the debate is that for the most part, I mean there are a few exceptions

where network owners have tried to screw around with information people transmit.

For the most part, what we have now is a network that respects the principle,

what's called the end-to-end principle, which is the same thing as network neutrality.

And the debate is really over, A, whether that principle is important, and B, if it is important,

whether we can preserve that without regulation or whether regulation isn't necessary in order to preserve it.

And my view is that it is pretty important,

...