whats the story behind this whole 'Net Neutrality' thing?

Answer 1

OK, the very quick and oversimplified version. :)

Basically, most of the companies providing cablemodem or DSL providers have *very* low margins - they don't make much profit per line from that $14.95/mo. Meanwhile, all of this downloading is stressing their capacity in ways they didn't plan for, and didn't allocate budget to upgrade. They know they can't charge more than that $14.95 for basic service, so what they've been doing is trying to shake down companies like Google and CNN to pay extra for the right to have their packets delivered to you without trouble. Of course, this means that other, smaller sites that can't afford the shakedown have their packets dropped so the sites end up going a lot slower....

If this sounds suspiciously like a mob protection racket ("Payz us da bucks and the packets don't get hurt"), that's because it is.
"Net Neutrality" is the concept that the provider try to deliver all packets equally, without any extortion going on.

The problem that Congress and other lawmaking bodies are trying to address is that *nobody* really knows what direction the Net is heading in, and it's very hard to write a law that bans shakedown money, but *also* allows them to charge extra for premium services (in other words, it's hard to not make things like "pay-per-view" illegal too).