I posted this for all my non-techie friends on Facebook, figured I'd share it here as well.
If you have any questions as to whether Net Neutrality and our government regulating the Internet is a good thing or not, I provide exhibit A; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spam In the United States, spam was declared to be legal by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 provided the message adheres to certain specifications. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003 Before this spam was illegal and an annoyance, not something you could build a career on creating blocking software. http://www.cybercrimejournal.com/alexdec2009.htm The data were aggregated by month and an interrupted time series design was chosen to assess the impact the CAN SPAM Act had on spam. Analyses revealed that the CAN SPAM Act had no observable impact on the amount of spam sent. The Act was found to have no effect on spammer compliance with two out of three spam laws in the CAN SPAM Act. The one law out of the three where there was a noticeable effect resulted in a decrease in compliance following the Act's passing. Lastly, the Act had no impact on the number of spam emails with IP addresses assumed to be within the United States.
