Well, big businesses do own the internet, its been like that for a long time. But businesses too have to stick to the rules.

What we see now is that big businesses are getting arrogant enough to put on the table a ready-to-use set of rules. They are hoping the government will agree with their proposal and use their legislative power to turn this proposal into a law. Or at least they hope the powers that be will be inspired by their proposal and pass a similar law.

The newspapers are now being sceptical about how net neutrality wasn't a problem until google and verizon claimed it was, but ofcourse that is bullshit as well. Net neutrality ís a big issue, we dó need new laws, nationally and internationally, to tackle many topics within the broad scope of net neutrality, such as how to deal with illegal or dangerous content, privacy issues, worldwide freedom of information, freedom of speech, etc.

Thanx to the emergence of the internet as a worldwide open communications platform and the fact that it is now accessible to a significant portion of the world population these issues have become increasingly intertwined. For instance:
 - You cannot filter all internet content for potentially dangerous material (such as sites that promote terrorism) without breaking the privacy of everyone on the internet.
 - You cannot force the removal of illegal or dangerous material off the internet, at any point of the system, without compromising freedom of information or freedom of speech.

The thing which everyone is scared of: "prioritization of internet traffic" is one of the things the verizon-google legislative framework proposal explicitly opposes. The framework says the following about this:

Non-Discrimination Requirement: In providing broadband Internet access service, a provider would be prohibited from engaging in undue discrimination against any lawful Internet content, application, or service in a manner that causes meaningful harm to competition or to users. Prioritization of Internet traffic would be presumed inconsistent with the non-discriminationstandard, but the presumption could be rebutted.

What people are most likely scared about is the following:

Additional Online Services: A provider that offers a broadband Internet access service

complying with the above principles could offer any other additional or differentiated services.

Such other services would have to be distinguishable in scope and purpose from broadband

Internet access service, but could make use of or access Internet content, applications or services and could include traffic prioritization. The FCC would publish an annual report on the effect of these additional services, and immediately report if it finds at any time that these services threaten the meaningful availability of broadband Internet access services or have been devised or promoted in a manner designed to evade these consumer protections.

This segment does state that services, other then "broadband internet access" cán receive traffic prioritization. But these services would have to be distinguishable different from "broadband internet connections" as a service. This isnt such a crazy suggestion. For instance, these days you can already receive tv, telephony and internet all through one cable connection package. It would make sense to allow a higher traffic bandwidth for the submission of HD television signals, while allowing a lower bandwidth for telephony.

Another thing many people trip over is the wireless broadband clause:

Wireless Broadband: Because of the unique technical and operational characteristics of

wireless networks, and the competitive and still-developing nature of wireless broadband

services, only the transparency principle would apply to wireless broadband at this time. The

U.S. Government Accountability Office would report to Congress annually on the continued

*development and robustness of wireless broadband Internet access services.

This clause says that wireless networks are free of all rules set in the framework other then the "transparency principle". This sounds scary but dont forget that the internet is accessed both wired and wireless.. so any actual content supplied on the internet itself would still be protected by the other principles.
I'm not quite sure which exclusively wireless services exist that could suffer from this clause.. does anyone have any ideas on this?

Finally, several newspapers claim the FCC would lose significant authority due to the following clause:

*Regulatory Authority: The FCC would have exclusive authority to oversee broadband Internet access service, but would not have any authority over Internet software applications, content or services. Regulatory authorities would not be permitted to regulate broadband Internet access service.

To some extend it is true that the FCC has only a very limited authority. But i think that is not the central issue here.

The FCC is the Federal Communications Commission, it deals with communication... And within the current proposal it maintains the exclusive authority to oversee broadband internet access service. 
This means the FCC can force any broadband internet access service provider to adjust their service to comply with the law, which is a very good thing.

What this clause does as well though is, it makes sure that access and content hosting and distribution would be separately controlled elements of the internet.
This means, no one can simply be denied access to the internet just because they supply content that isnt entirely legal. I think it is a very healthy thing to enforce this division as it will help ensure a safe balance between the various conflicting facets of net neutrality i mentioned before.

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