Net Neutrality and the Tea Party

It looks like one of the last vestiges of truly free speech and expression may be under siege.  Lately there has been a debate raging between some of the large telecoms and congress over the idea of "net neutrality". To sum the whole thing up in simple terms, Verizon and Google want to control the access speed of certain websites so that, for instance, YouTube will load faster than someone's personal home-video website. The ISP would have the power to allow bigger companies to pay them more in order to get faster connection speeds to users.

I have a fundamental problem with any sort of regulation or censorship of the Internet. I like the fact that the Internet provides (mostly) uncensored access to a wealth of information. To me, it has become one of the great equalizers in our society - allowing small companies to compete with big ones by getting equal exposure on the web for a relatively low cost. I don't know if this is going to continue if large companies are allowed to buy higher connection speeds.

Maybe this is just the way things go. As Wal-Mart kills off "mom and pop" stores, Google and other large internet companies will be able to keep the competition down on the web. Something that is interesting about this debate is the stance of the Tea Party. They oppose the FCC's attempts to block Verizon and Google's plan because they hold that government control of anything is wrong.  I see their point - I don't want the government regulating internet use either - but is it better to let large companies censor the internet?

This is the fundamental problem with letting the "free-market" control everything.  There is no such thing as a truly free-market.  Large corporations with exponentially greater resources than small start-ups will always be able to bully and monopolize the market if allowed to essentially create "legislation". In my mind, this replaces an elected government with a group of large businesses, but is this truly a better option?