Hear hear!

Good luck.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I've missed quite a few more cases of potentially unlawful communications.

Do also bear in mind that 'legal'/'lawful' doesn't stipulate the jurisdiction - it could be 'Lowest common denominator', e.g. discussion concerning the weather and praise for the king could remain the only legal communications in all jurisdictions.

"can't discriminate LEGAL traffic" -- watch out for that critical qualifier won't you?

Believe it or not, but copyright infringement isn't illegal either (the holder of the privilege can sue to exclude, but unless they do, the infringement isn't illegal per se).

Frankly, 'packets not yet determined to be legal' is quite sufficient to route them via a network node with indefinite latency.

Copyright is already making illegal speech that should be free, so I don't know where you get your confidence that 'legal' isn't a major communications discriminator.

The best mechanism for achieving neutrality is to have MORE unregulated network providers - to prevent cartels & monopolies, etc. Given a choice between an ISP that throttled BitTorrent and another that didn't, the latter would win the custom of those who used it, and the former the custom of wealthy couch potatoes.

'Network neutrality' IS regulatory capture.

Anyone who thinks government can regulate communication to ensure everyone can say what they like and that no speech suffers discrimination is living in cloud cuckoo land.

All that happens is that government says "Ok, if you really, really want us to regulate your speech, we will - reluctantly".

And then you end up with a system of censorship at the infrastructure level that China would wet its knickers over.

Network neutrality is everything everyone is asking for EXCEPT what they're expecting to get, i.e. all packets may still be discriminated against for purposes of state control and commercial expediency, but all those packets that the state and infrastructure owners wouldn't really have cared to fuss over are assured equality (which they would have had anyway).

'Network neutrality' is 'Turkeys voting for Xmas' - very sad, but that's turkeys for you; brain the size of a pea.

Once the turkeys get what they wished for, the guano will hit the plucking machines and they'll all come running to the hackers for help and salvation. The Internet then gets yet another layer to route around censorship, another layer of inefficiency. And the cycle repeats itself...

Lawful means:
1) Unencrypted (or encrypted with TSA backdoor)
2) Not infringing copyright, or involved in facilitating/inducing infringement
3) Not unauthorised communication of military/industrial secrets
4) Not relating to terrorism, extremism, drugs, porn, anarchy/sedition, blasphemy, etc.
5) Not unauthorised communication of personal data
6) Not transmitted to/received from banned sites, organisations, persons, IP addresses, networks, etc.

Other than that, and except for network optimisation purposes, all packets will be treated equally.

Have you considered the possibility that they recognise it will fail too?

It is quite possible they must first demonstrate paywall failure in order to expedite and escalate the bailout option: what we recognise as an Internet tax, but they prefer to call a compulsory license fee.

Sometimes you have to be seen to have tried and failed at every possible solution before you are rescued by the taxpayer.

Of course, the one solution the newspapers won't try is the one that cuts them out of the value chain, i.e. where the readers miss out the newspaper altogether and pay the journalists (bloggers) directly (to write - not to read).

It's already happened with software (copyleft) where the coders are paid directly, and copies can be freely made. News International aren't interested in this option and hope no-one notices it hasn't been tried. They have to hurry the introduction of an Internet tax long before anyone starts paying journos directly. That's why it's worth throwing millions away on a grand moonshot in order that the spectacular/disastrous failure sanctions popular support for a very lucrative tax. The paywall also helps establish their preferred price for news in order that they get as much of the eventual tax as possible (fighting for their share along with every other digitisable industry).

Masnick's law strikes again.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Masnick's%20Law

Also see the discussion at http://bit.ly/dtsT44 which touches on Diaspora ($100k+) and Humble Indie Bundle ($1m+) as examples of the future business model for the exchange of intellectual work and the money of the multitudes who want it produced.