Net Neutrality is the principle that ISPs should give all web sites and services equal use of the bandwidth consumers purchase from them. For example, Google should not get traffic priority over, say, TFS when it comes to sharing bandwidth to users.

Many ISPs, particularly cable companies, are lobbying hard for the ability to throttle bandwidth depending on who it's coming from and how much they're paying. For example, they want to be able to limit Hulu traffic severely so that they can sell their customers their own streaming TV services. They want to be able to threaten to cut off Google and Youtube bandwidth unless Google pays them big bucks.

What's the big danger, you say? Imagine this scenario, courtesy of Gizmodo.

I hope nothing changes. If I'm reading it correctly, we'll have to pay extra for our Internet service if we use certain sites?

Just too many national carriers today for that to become a reality----every major phone co. providing net services now

Well I "don't pay" for my internet anyway. (It's part of a call package thing), but even if this does happen, wouldn't we be able to just use proxies, from countries with scary governments? Like China, or north Korea?

I use AT&T. Pretty big company. I'll be furious if they change my plan!

Never heard of this before now. I suppose it'll come to the US before hitting anywhere else... And that's if it happens. But I don't understand... That internet isn't owned by anyone. It's public. So how can certain ISP's charge people for using certain websites on the internet?