End of Open: Growing Concern over a Two-Tier Internet

For those cautiously watching it, the debate about a Two-Tier Internet has been simmering for several months now (see previous coverage by BBC, Slashdot, The Guardian, The Register and others). The issue is increasingly escalating and Wired News today published a new piece on the state of affairs: Building the Internet Toll Road.
The core of the discussion focuses on preferential treatment of internet traffic for certain websites and services. Backbone carriers like AT&T and BellSouth can ultimately control which data packets receive priority in relay and transmission as they travel through their networks and cables. They could for instance purposely slow down or block Skype traffic or Google Video in favor of their own multimedia and voice services; similarly, they could auction traffic priority and pit major websites against each other such as Google vs. Yahoo (response time ranks second highest among the priorities for users of search engines).
A “second tier” would be the extreme of such scenarios, in which fibers carry only selected services and no others to an end-user’s home (like a local Cable TV company controlling the channel selection of its viewers).
Until now, not enough resistance has publicly gathered but will soon need to be organized if this trend is to be contained; its effects would only have negative consequences for the internet as an open platform.