Is Net Neutrality really dead?
Revisit the original Agonist Net Neutrality Project ~qB

Declan McCullagh | September 6

CNN - If you haven't heard much about Net neutrality this year, you're not alone. It went from being the political equivalent of a first-run Broadway show, with accompanying street protests and high profile votes in Congress, to a third-rate performance with no budget and slumping attendance.

So what killed Net neutrality? Here's a list, in no particular order:

(see article at site for in-article links)

1. The Bush administration. Democrats may control Congress, but the White House and federal agencies matter. And the administration made it perfectly clear on Thursday that no new Net neutrality regulations are necessary. That gives the Republicans in Congress their marching orders, and a unified GOP front means the Democrats are more likely to expend ammunition elsewhere.

2. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The California Democrat claimed to adore Net neutrality last year, saying: "Without Net neutrality the current experience that Internet users enjoy today is in jeopardy. Without the Markey Amendment, telecommunications and cable companies will be able to create toll lanes on the information superhighway. This strikes at the heart of the free and equal nature of the Internet." The Markey Amendment was defeated in a Republican Congress last year.

But even though Pelosi's now in charge, she's done precisely nothing (at least nothing that's been publicly visible) to live up to last year's rhetoric.

3. The AT&T merger. Net neutrality rules were part of the Federal Communications Commission's approval of the AT&T and BellSouth merger in December 2006. The company pledged not to privilege, degrade, or prioritize "any packet transmitted over AT&T/BellSouth's wireline broadband Internet access service based on its source, ownership or destination" for two years. That defused concerns for a while, which had grown after AT&T CEO Edward Whitacre was quoted as talking about giving Google and other Internet companies a "free ride" on his network, whatever that means.

4. A fragmenting coalition. The major pro-Net neutrality coalition last year was called "It's Our Net" and boasted 148 members. Now, says coalition spokesman Eric London, it's been "reconstituted in a different form" with a broader focus and is called the Open Internet Coalition. (The old domain name redirects to the new one.)

But the list of members today is far smaller, at just 74 members. Missing are previous members including Adobe, Amazon.com, the Business Software Alliance, Expedia, Intel, Microsoft, Sony, and Yahoo. Companies that stayed in the coalition include eBay, Earthlink, Google, NetCoalition (which includes CNET Networks), and TiVo.

5. Mixed messages. Most proposals for extensive Net neutrality regulations have given the FCC broad authority, not least because the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission said in August 2006 that she was skeptical of aggressive regulation.

Then Google's head of public policy said a few months later that "cutting the FCC out of the picture would be a smart move" in favor of Justice Department or FTC enforcement. Now, maybe he was misquoted, and Google subsequently said there's "no change" in the company's position. And it's true that the company has continued to be a part of pro-Net neutrality coalitions. Still, the legislation that Google officially supported in mid-2006 would have put the FCC--not the FTC--in charge.

There's also Google CEO Eric Schmidt's speech last month in Aspen, Colorado that I covered. By Google's standards, it was remarkably conciliatory: it mentioned Net neutrality only once and did not call for new federal laws. Schmidt even acknowledged "the billions of dollars that have been spent to do both wireless and wireline data deployment networks"--by the broadband providers that have been his political enemies for the last two years.

6. The Bush administration. Yes, it's on the list twice. It's on here again because of how much President Bush's and the Justice Department's arguably illegal wiretapping program and related policies have consumed Congress. The four most recent headlines on the House Judiciary Committee's Web site are about FISA or the Justice Department. In the Senate, the Judiciary Committee has held no fewer than seven hearings on the dismissal of U.S. Attorneys. It's true that the two Commerce committees haven't been tied up with those topics, but the Iraq War and global warming have been higher priorities than less pressing concerns about broadband regulation.

7. The Federal Trade Commission. The lifelong bureaucrats at the FTC are hardly a bunch of Hayek-quoting, Ron Paul-voting libertarians. Which is why, as I wrote in June, it's notable that they came out with a report saying no new laws are necessary. In part it's something of a turf battle, of course, and a way to warn the FCC that it doesn't have a monopoly on this issue. But it could have been far more enthusiastic about new laws, and is sure to make otherwise pro-regulation Democrats think twice about supporting them again.

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