Politicos divided on need for 'net neutrality' mandate | CNET News.com

I was reading this on News.com today, and it made me think. Politicians are fighting to eliminate the possibility of a two-tiered internet, to keep it "open" and "free", but yet they seem to miss the connections to other aspects of the tech culture.

Why is the internet free? Easy, because it uses open standards and protocols. Anyone can go look up the HTML or CSS spec, write an HTTP client that can interpret them, and boom, you're on the internet.

Can't our congresspeople see the connection to the office space? Right now, the world of office software is closed. The most widely used "standard" is a proprietary, undocumented format, causing there to be no overall interoperability. What would have happened in 1995 if there had been open standards? Would people be choosing between Lotus, Microsoft, or Borland/Corel products, and possibly some open source alternatives, or would the overall office space still be dominated by Microsoft? I say it'd be a more balanced arena, more consumer needs would be met, and there'd be more aggressive pricing.