Forbes cover story: proof the net is not neutral!

The people who still argue that the Internet is "neutral" have some explaining to do.

• They certainly don't want you to read the super Forbes cover story on Akamai: "Video Prophet: How Akamai survived the dot-com bust to thrive on speed."
• Check out these quotes from the article that drive home the point that the Internet has never been "neutral:"
• ..."Akamai's big idea is that by rewriting the Internet's basic rules--making some computers smarter and more equal than others--it can let the Net grow infinitely large without breaking down."...
• Horrors! Akamai is not treating bits equally! Someone call the Government!
• ..."a basic idea: Connect computers to the far reaches of the Net, then program them to communicate with one another to spot better routes for getting e-mails, Web pages and other packets to where they needed to go."...
• But the Internet is supposed to be a DUMB network! A "smarter" network would not be innovative...that can't be right...
• ..."Eventually they refined a business idea: a service that essentially would be the FedEx (nyse: FDX - news - people ) of the Internet. People could always trust the public Net to deliver their information cheaply. But others might be willing to pay Akamai a premium to deliver their content faster and more reliably..."
• Horrors again! Someone had the gall to think the perfectly "equal" Internet could be made better with a market concept of a tiered Internet... oh tell me its not true!
• ..."Every few months the algorithm writers in Cambridge inject better software into the global network to make it shrewder at picking routes for Internet traffic."...
• Egads! There are dark forces out there making the Internet less equal every few months!

I feel kinda bad that all those well-intentioned people that fell for the original slogan of "net neutrality" were suckered into assuming the Internet was "neutral" and needed to stay that way.

• It must be a bummer for those folks to learn that like, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the tooth fairy... net neutrality was just made up... not true.

Bottom line: If one can't trust that the core assumption undergirding a major legislative proposal is true, how seriously can one take the rest of their argument?