In the beginning there were bulletin board systems. Many thousands of small bulletin board systems, most of which were run by individuals out of their homes, and could only support one user at a time. There were also larger bulletin board systems. Some could support hundreds of simultaneous users and were sustainable businesses - people paid subscription fees to access them. There were also large commercial online services that could support millions of subscribers.

Thats what a healthy competitive ecosystem looks like - lots of players of different sizes, doing their own thing. An open door for innovation, even by hobbyists. You didn't even have to know how to develop software in order to run one of these communities, because lots of people ran them, and software to do so was readily available.

Part of the reason that it worked, is that we all had the same kind of network connectivity. The quantum unit was a single phone line. Anyone could do, in their homes, everything that the big guys were doing. The big guys had more lines, but they were the same kind of lines.

That changed in the late 1990's. We replaced phone lines and ISDN circuits with ADSL circuits and Cable Modems. These circuits were asymmetrical - they couldn't send as much data as they could receive. As a consequence, it wasn't possible for someone to do, in their home, what commercial services were doing in commercial data centers, and if you wanted to put your own computer in a commercial data center, that was potentially very expensive.

As a result, the ecosystem changed. Individuals were much less likely to run online communities. Interaction on the Internet became consolidated in centralized services like Facebook and Youtube. Because building your own small community was expensive, a market didn't develop to support that activity. No one makes good software for people to run their own social network out of their homes.

Now we have a debate going on about "Net Neutrality." The idea is that Internet ought to be a level playing field for innovation. In order to create that level playing field, we're all supposed to get the same kind of pipe. If you remember the ecosystem that we had in the early 1990's, this idea sounds like it might be attractive. If we all have the same raw materials, we can compete more readily with each other. There is a whole lot of money that is being invested in Net Neutrality activism and there are a whole lot of people who support the idea.

However, when you dig a little deeper, it becomes apparent that the activists aren't really arguing in favor of net neutrality for you and me. They don't care if individual Internet users are able to host services easily and inexpensively. They don't care about ending port filtering of consumer Internet connections or enabling consumers to get access to symmetric pipes. They want a level playing field between all the big players who are donating money to them - the Googles, NetFlixes, and Yahoos of the world. They don't want a level playing field between Google, and you, and me.

In the end, the advocates of net neutrality think that "some pigs are more equal that others." They are really only advocating net neutrality for the rich financiers of their campaigns, and once that sort of neutrality is achieved, that will be the end of all the advocacy.

Now what difference does this make?

You might say that those issues aren't as important as they used to be. Its a lot easier and cheaper these days for someone to get a server on the Internet to support his or her hobby than it was 20 years ago. That 20 year window has taken its toll. We just don't have the same culture online that we used to have. Individual people don't bartend communities online anymore like they used to. But the technical barriers to it have probably fallen far enough.

I think its the principle of the thing. The activists of net neutrality want individual internet users to join in their protests - they want to present their movement as a grass roots effort. But its fake. They don't actually support net neutrality for the people that they are trying to recruit as part of their movement. They only care about the interests of the large corporate donors, and once those interests are served the party will be over.

So its not really about net neutrality - not really. Its not really about the public interest, and its not really about a level playing field for innovation. Its really just about the financial interests of large websites that stream content.

There may be benefits to actual net neutrality if it really created a truly level competitive playing field, but thats not what these activists are asking for. They are only asking for things that benefit narrow interests, and its not clear that this fun house mirror kind of net neutrality that they want is really in the public's interest, any more than it was in the interest of George Orwell's animals for the pigs to get extra food.

Finally, its disingenuous to frame a debate that is purely about the financial interests of some companies as a broader issue that matters to individual people. Those people are just pawns, and thats what I really find offensive about it.