deep packet inspection and network neutrality

There's a really interesting article over at Ars Technica which talks about Deep Packet Inspection. This may sound like deep geek talk, but it's actually a really interesting article, all about how your internet provider wants to control what you can see and do on the internets. Just go past the networking stuff and into the implications section, if the tech is too much. The author is quite obviously biased, but so am I, so there you go. I especially like his dissection of the marketing-speak producers of DPI machines use:

Let me put my cards on the table: I loathe the word "exaflood." It sounds like the sort of concept that would surface in a bad science fiction novel, one involving a sentient artificial intelligence, aliens who speak only in clicks, and a hard-boiled ex-space Marine with a shotgun. I'm not going to use it again, but if you're not familiar with the term (it's generally used not in any technical sense, but simply to mean "a whole lot of data"), check out this Wall Street Journal article or this freely-available reprint.

This battle has yet to play out, and the little guy (that'd be you and me) has a lot staked on its outcome. We'll see what happens.... (via slashdot)

That's actually a really good article on the whole net neutrality issue. I've been looking on and off for a good overview of the argument on both sides for quite a while. Most articles I have read have really focused on one side of the argument or another, and the different sides almost never do an apples to apples comparison. It also doesn't help that, as noted, there are almost as many sides/opinions as there are groups involved. Well, truthfully it seems to be around 100 sides arguing for various levels of net neutrality against the big corporate/ ISP group whole seem to have the same agenda, which is, in itself, something that has made me suspicious of their arguements.