We just came across a very interesting new article on Tim Wu, the Columbia University law professor who coined the term "net neutrality."

It tells the tale of how Wu turned a presentation at an obscure research conference in 2003 into the rallying cry for the current national movement to enact a net neutrality law. The article is a little long by online standards, but well worth the time.

Both Wu and the story of how he helped father the net neutrality debate are fascinating. But what we found most intriguing about the article was its well crafted explanation of what net neutrality is and why it matters so much.

We found this particular passage truly eye-opening:

"Wu was worried that large telecommunications companies who own the cables and routers that make the Internet possible could interfere with the information coming across their wires. In a web without neutrality, CNN's ability to pay more than the average Joe could mean that a personal website would take longer to load and face more limitations than the CNN homepage, to give one example.

At the time Wu delivered his paper, Riverstore Networks, his former employer, was already in the process of making such control possible. Wu told me, "we [Riverstore] were trying to sell the exact same technology to Verizon and AT&T as we were trying to sell to the Chinese government," which uses such technology to censor political dissent."

Lucky for us that Wu decided to instead use his considerable intellect and persuasive powers for good.