Net neutrality lobbying intensifies

Advocates on both sides of a debate in the U.S. Congress over Net neutrality pumped up their lobbying efforts late this week, even as a Senate committee delayed acting on the issue.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, scheduled Thursday to consider amendments to a 150-plus-page broadband bill, met for about two hours before adjourning to allow senators to vote on other legislation. The committee got through about 10 of the more than 210 amendments proposed for the broadband bill before committee Chairman Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, rescheduled the hearing for 10 a.m. Tuesday.

[ See also: Net neutrality face-off on NPR ]

The delay allows tech companies and consumer groups pushing for Congress to prohibit broadband providers from blocking or impairing competing Web content to continue their efforts to strengthen Net neutrality provisions in the bill. The committee on Thursday did not address Net neutrality and the bill’s broadcast flag provision, which would require the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to create a technology plan for protecting online video and audio files.

Entertainment companies have pushed for broadcast flag rules, saying Congress should protect their copyrights. But some consumer and technology groups have protested the provision, saying it would restrict legal consumer uses of video and audio files.

But most of the debate over the bill centers around Net neutrality. The latest version of the bill, sponsored by Stevens, would allow broadband customers to run Internet applications of their choosing, but it doesn’t prohibit broadband providers from giving their own services preference over competing services. An earlier version of the bill only instructed the FCC to make annual reports to Congress on the free flow of Internet information.

A bill passed by the House this month would allow the FCC to investigate content-blocking complaints after the fact. Both the House and the Senate bills would streamline franchising requirements for telecom companies rolling out television-over-Internet Protocol services in competition with cable TV.

Broadband providers such as AT&T Inc. say they have no plans to block competing Web content, but they want to be able to explore new business plans that allow them to charge new fees to give some Web content priority routing across the Internet. Net neutrality backers have protested that such a plan would create a two-tiered network, with content from broadband providers and their partners in a fast lane and everyone else in a slow lane.

This week, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, recorded a video in support of a Net neutrality law. “When I invented the Web, I didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission,” Berners-Lee wrote in his blog. “Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going to end in the USA.”

Meanwhile, AT&T and other broadband providers continued to push for Congress to allow them to control their own broadband pipes without government regulation. AT&T rejected a proposal, made by civil liberties group the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), that would allow broadband providers to offer special services on private networks separate from the Internet, but require them to treat all Internet traffic the same.

“When you put lipstick on a pig it’s still a pig,” said AT&T spokeswoman Claudia Jones. “CDT’s proposal is a transparent effort to put some lipstick on the many proposals to regulate the Internet. This proposal will still result in consumers paying all the costs of building a better Internet while Internet Goliaths like Google receive government-sanctioned corporate welfare to avoid paying their fair share.”