John Edwards in a speech at Howard University was talking about Net-Neutrality. However, it seems to me he is confusing free speech and network neutrality.

Via Savetheinternet.com:

This goes to the heart and soul of democracy. Because, if Democracy is going to work in this country, then we want people to be well informed and we want a wide variety of diverse voices to be heard. And that’s what is at issue with these media conglomerates … We really have to stay on top of this because what we see flourishing at the grassroots can be stomped on if we’re not careful.

I mean come on we are talking about if communication companies can prioritize network traffic and if they can have a tiered pricing models. We are not talking about the blocking of blogs, and other free speech. Certainly there is some blocking going on of streaming media but this should be worked out by market forces. The issue here is we don’t have true market forces at play. Instead we have Telcos that are protected by layers of regulation. Yet the everyone feels that addional regulation will fix the issue. Regulation is not the solution to this issue. Instead regulation will only to serve to stifle innovation, lower availability and increase costs.