im Berners-Lee knows a thing or three about the World Wide Web. He invented it, after all. On his blog, he talks about a lot of issues. Web censorship. Microformats. Protocols. And, with increasing frequency, Net Neutrality. Yesterday’s post is titled, “Net Neutrality: This Is Serious.” In the succinct post, Berners-Lee defines Net Neutrality:

If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.

He makes strong arguments for why we need legislation in the United States that guarantees this access and that doesn’t succomb to the short-sighted quarterly thinking being promoted by corporations and media giants.

On his own blog, Lawrence Lessig weighs in pointing out that one clue to the debate involves watching “what kind of souls are on each side of the debate.” On the one side, we have those who invented the Web along with those who’ve managed to profit from it — Berners-Lee and Microsoft. On the other, we have those who find themselves eating dust — the telcos and cable companies. The United States is in danger of hobbling itself in a global information market. May the smart guys win out.