In essence, the big telcos want to turn the Information Superhighway into a high-priced toll road and force everyone who can't pay their Internet tariff off onto a cow path.

Really, the big telcos just want to push most of the job- and wealth-producing entrepreneurial energy of the Internet off into the mud. By doing that, they can make considerably more money in the short run, even though the general effect will be strangulation of perhaps the most dynamic aspect of the U.S. economy. At the same time, they will be able to arrange additional straightforward extraction dollars from your pocket.

They don't care in the least about the broad economic effects, or the eventual cost to them of suppressing economic activity.

They are myopically focused on using their almost monopolistic power over the expressways of the Information Superhighway to milk Internet users and Internet service providers for more revenue.

That is what the end of "Net Neutrality" will mean, if the big telcos get their way and Congress allows it to end.

Net neutrality is coming to a boil again in Washington, this time in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Drop by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce for a lot more information on this. Or visit save the internet for well-summarized information.

Either way, or neither way, let your Congressional Representative know that you favor Net Neutrality.

Or you can pay through the nose in new and often carefully concealed ways that are interesting in the Chinese sense, and watch U.S. Internet and Web innovation go the way of so many other, once vital industries.