Bithead makes a great point, and there's a nice discussion of some of his/her points at internetweek. However - to play devil's advocate a bit - if it's in the telcos' interests to create a channelized internet infrastructure, it stands to reason that they'll cooperatively adopt some QoS (diff serv) protocol. In his Senate testimony, Lessig admits that the idea of ISP competition protecting end-to-end network neutrality is pretty much DOA. I think he's right (though I still can't understand his support of a privileged - consumer - end of transmission, nor for that matter, a service-based privileging of transmission; but that's another story). The real solution to these issues is increasing available bandwidth (fiber-to-the-home, wave division multiplexing, freeing-up of hoarded spectrum, etc.) so "tiering" becomes a moot issue. However, as long as the telcos are able to (continue to) convince the public, legislators and the FCC that bandwidth is a practically limited resource, their argument will seem cogent; allowing them to exact an even greater fee - for the paltry services they currently provide - by "tiering" their services. Moreover, they will have little to no incentive to invest in capicity growth with a "tiered" internet. In fact, one might argue that allowing "tiering" would actually provide a disincentive for investment in capacity, as it would only undermine the telcos' justification for lucrative "tiering" of services. Finally, I'm at least a little concerned with the second to last sentence in the original post (I agree with everything up until that sentence :> ). The idea that the interactions/relationships made possible by the internet can be separated from the protocols for storing and forwarding elements is just a bit disingenuous. Sure, one can imagine another - different and/or improved - set of protocols for storing and forwarding transmissions. But, there are principles of network design implicit in the protocol substrate of "the Internet" that are the basis of its success; not just any old substrate will provide the basis for the interactions/relationships we value. You might say I've got a little "separation anxiety" . . . exactly how separate is a medium from its expressions? What would McLuhan say?