BTW, Ray, makes a great point.

I’d also like to make another point. While I’m pleased the Net Neutrality debate has gotten beyond ridiculous bipolar debate the common depiction by astroturfers was that passing a bill mandating net neutrality was “pro-regulationism” and that the net hadn’t had any regulation before so it need not have it now. This is untrue. Up untill about May 2005 the last mile of the internet was protected under common carrier laws that specifically protected anything that ran over phone lines… this included DSL of course. The FCC (under Michael Powell I believe it was) removed all those regulations when dealing with internet connectivity. Net Neutrality is just a reinstating of this regulation. BTW… there is the question of wether such a law is even necissary… see AOL’s failure and “the network effect”… services that are not open loose tremendous value… however… there’s NO transparency in the marketplace… meaning services like VOIP could be degregated without your even nowing what the problem is. QOS, yeah right… that’s exactly what they’d want you to think when they upsell you to their own VOIP because you can’t get Skype or Vonage working well. The lack of transparency may be the real issue.

BTW, there were a couple of good NPR debates dealing with the issue in podcast, one of them had Siva Vyanathan(sp?) from NYU. It’s been so crazy lately that might have been more than a month ago. But it should be easily google-able.

On Saturday I attended Techdirt Greenhouse for the second time. It was, again, a great gathering of intellect, talent, opinion and creativity. The format and methodology is what attracted me in the first place: brain jamming, if you will. Interesting c…

Before we go casting about for solutions, let’s make sure we know what the problem is. At this point, the Telcos say they’d like to offer richer service options than they have in the past, in order to support applications that need Quality of Service guarantees from the network. That’s not an evil plan, and it’s been common in commerical Internet connections for a long time.

The trouble with the bits and pipes and wires it that they’re the actual subject matter of telecom regulation, but I agree with you that Free Speech! and free content are separate issues from telecom regulation.

Unfortunately, Susan Crawford and her dim-witted pals have confused the two realms of regulation, most likely because they have no clue about how the bits move through the wires.

Adriana Cronin @ Media Influencer blogs right after speaking on the net neutrality panel at Vloggercon in San Francisco….