Greetings. In a filing at the FCC two days ago, the Department of Justice -- apparently with spare time on its hands while waiting for Gonzales to clear out his desk and move on to the lecture circuit -- came out strongly against Network Neutrality.

With so much DOJ disarray these days and so many critical issues that have been left to molder, one might ask how they even managed to pull these utterly specious arguments together.

Actually, it's pretty obvious that they didn't even really have to write the text themselves -- it's essentially a word-for-word parroting of the standard anti-neutrality propaganda from the telco/cable/ISP public relations machine. It even repeats the ludicrous example of different classes of delivery services at the U.S. Postal Service. Apparently we have to say it yet again -- network neutrality doesn't mean that you can't have different classes of service, only that you shouldn't be allowed to discriminate unfairly in the provision of services.

And of course they also echo the balderdash that there's no need for neutrality rules until after anti-neutrality damage has been done. This is much the same sort of reasoning that the FAA has used to delay ordering the fixing of known plane problems until after deadly crashes. Oops!

That DOJ would be so firmly in bed with the anti-neutrality gang shouldn't be at all surprising, considering the department's "night moves" with those same shady cohorts for illegal wiretapping programs, the revealed scope of which seems to expand almost daily (including today).

Let me put it this way -- given DOJ's recent track record, the fact they've come out so firmly against net neutrality should be proof enough that there's a lot of merit to the neutrality concept.

And for that roundabout and unintentional boost for pro-network neutrality arguments, perhaps we should actually thank DOJ for their input, after all.

--Lauren--