Charlie Rose Talks to Tim Wu

What does the recent net neutrality vote at the Federal Communications Commission mean?
It means there's now a federal net neutrality law. And that means it's illegal for a carrier, let's say Verizon (VZ), to block, say, Hulu or Bing. China blocks a lot of stuff for censorship reasons. In America, it's less about blocking and more about wanting to speed things up. You know, so Verizon has a partnership with Google (GOOG); they speed up YouTube, and they slow down Hulu. And the net neutrality rule is supposed to prevent that.

And how did the sides line up in this debate?
Google has favored the net neutrality rule. But slowly, they've gotten closer to Verizon. AT&T (T), the great communications monopolist of American history, has always been opposed to net neutrality. So it's kind of a mixture. Generally, the [Internet] companies like net neutrality, and the phone and cable companies hate it.