A whole lot of talk has taken place recently about Net Neutrality. The histrionics and grandiose claims on both sides of the issue are quite disappointing. And that seems to be biggest problem.

In his recent FOX News program, Glenn Beck highlighted the group Free Press and their support of Net Neutrality legislation and regulation. Beck makes some points and observations about the leftist agenda of Free Press and its co-founder founder, Robert W. McChesney. There's no doubt that McChesney is out of step with mainstream America with regard to his views on media, government control, etc. His comments do seem like those of a socialist or, dare I say, a Marxist.

But, stop! Net Neutrality wasn't created by Marxists! No, it's just being co-opted by them... and probably lots of other groups that see government control over Internet service providers as a means to an end for them.

The problem with Net Neutrality right now is that many groups are trying to claim it as their poster-child issue. Libertarian conservatives are saying Net Neutrality is an example of government overbearance or even tears at the fabric of the Constitution.

On the flip-side, we have leftists who apparently have incredible amounts of disdain, distrust, and suspicion toward corporations who might alter, affect, control, or in any way or form touch content from the Internet as it's being delivered to their computers.

I'm opposed to Net Neutrality. Not because it's a conspiracy to usher in totalitarian government control over the Internet and not because I don't care about freedom of speech or freedom of the press.

Let's look at some history.

In 2007, some customers of Comcast's Internet service complained they were having problems downloading files using the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol. BitTorrent is a common method for sharing and distributing large files such as Linux distribution installation images that can grow to several gigabytes in size. To be frank, however, most BitTorrent traffic is largely downloads of music, movies, and TV show content. I think it's fair to say most of this data is for entertainment purposes.

Apparently, Comcast was experiencing some problems with BitTorrent users creating congestion on their networks. Comcast chose a highly unorthodox means of dealing with the congestion and basically tricked the users' BitTorrent clients into thinking their connections had been closed, thereby killing the BitTorrent downloads.

As word got out about the experiences of the Comcast users who had been affected by Comcast's tactics, Comcast denied doing anything. When users showed proof of what was going on, Comcast confessed. Eventually, Comcast said they would adopt a "protocol-neutral stance" on managing traffic on their networks.

I think Comcast was out of line doing what they did. I think someone should have been fired, if they weren't, for doing what they did. I'm surprised, really, that Comcast didn't have more integral methods for dealing with "bandwidth hogs."

Internet protocol networking has long supported the notion of Quality of Service (QoS) measures of traffic control for prioritizing certain kinds of traffic over others. For example, voice-over-IP (VOIP) traffic might be deemed high-priority because it's a service people depend on and can't tolerate congestion affecting the service.

I'm surprised, to say the least, that Comcast didn't have priority-based queuing in place for their networks.

But some free-speech advocates are crying foul saying any attempt to regulate the flow of data by an Internet service provider essentially equates to censorship or stifling speech. Bull crap!

That's almost like crying censorship because a newspaper didn't quote everything you said, verbatim, at that pro-spotted owl rally. No, they had limited space and had to prioritize.

Now, I'm not a fan of Comcast... or Qwest (both are the major providers of broadband Internet service in my area), but I do believe they should not be regulated, controlled, or otherwise overseen by the federal government in how they carry Internet traffic.

Any Internet service provider's business model is built around giving its customers the best Internet experience possible. I firmly believe that, within reason, any ISP is going to do as much as they can do accomplish that goal. However, if certain users abuse the freedom they've been given by the provider and that threatens to affect the experience of other users, the provider has every right to do something to protect the overall network performance. I contend that the business objective of Internet service providers already promotes the best service possible for the bulk of customers.

Net Neutrality, on the other hand, could force less-than-ideal performance on everyone in the name of equality. It could force providers into charging tiered rates like Time Warner explored doing in 2008, much to the disapproval of their customer base.

The federal government was responsible for creating the Internet through Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) projects in the 1960s that created the ARPANet, the great-granddaddy of the Internet. In 1998, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released its last talons from the backbones of the Internet and allowed complete privatization of the burgeoning network. It's arguable, based on what happened from 1998 until today, that allowing the Internet to thrive completely out of the government's control was the best thing that could have happened. I don't see any benefit of returning any aspect of the Internet back into the government's hands.