What Everyone Gets Wrong in the Debate Over Net Neutrality

[Commentary] Privileged companies -- including Google, Facebook, and Netflix -- already benefit from what are essentially Internet fast lanes, and this has been the case for years.

Such web giants -- and others -- now have direct connections to big Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon, and they run dedicated computer servers deep inside these ISPs. In technical lingo, these are known as “peering connections” and “content delivery servers,” and they’re a vital part of the way the internet works.

The concepts driving today’s net neutrality debate caught on because the Internet used to operate differently -- and because they were easy for consumers to understand. In many respects, these concepts were vitally important to the evolution of the Internet over the past decades. But in today’s world, they don’t address the real issue with the country’s ISPs, and if we spend too much time worried about fast lanes, we could hurt the net’s progress rather than help it.