I wasn't at the mark up, so others who were at the mark up can provide information. Senators Snowe and Dorgan had introduced a bill to Preserve Internet Freedom. They didn't have the votes to get it through. The Committee handling the Telecommunications rewrite--this is a big rewrite, like 1996, and again the media isn't covering it--is the Commerce Committee.
Net Neutrality, as most of you know, is the principle on which the internet is built. It's what separates the internet from cable. In cable, the guy who owns the cable company, Comcast or TW say, decides what you can see. He also gets a cut of say the shopping channel, and (I've heard their lobbyists say this) are annoyed they don't get the same cut from Amazon.
Net Neutrality always existed under dial-up because the telephone companies weren't allowed to interfere with traffic going over their lines. You could pick up a phone and call your mom or call AOL, and Verizon couldn't block you. The FCC changed that and made broadband internet like cable.
Without Net Neutrality, Daily Kos might be blocked. Might not be. But AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast have that right. Without Net Neutrality, Amazon will have to pay some sort of fee for a faster non-degraded connection. That cost will pass to you. Get ready to pay more for books. Or, if you punch in www.amazon.com, don't be surprised if you're shuttled over to the "COMCAST BOOKSTORE." These are all rights they have now.
The Snowe-Dorgan bill was going to restore net neutrality. The FCC had taken it away, with the Supreme Court's blessing in an idiotic case written by Clarence Thomas and handed down the same day as Grokster.
Snowe and Dorgan had to then introduce the bill as an amendment to the major telecom rewrite... They didn't even have the votes for that. From what I've heard from people at the mark up (this is where amendments are voted on for a bill, in a committee) they introcuded a water down version that would simply ban discrimination--like Comcast couldn't speed up FoxNews.com and slow down Talking Points Memo.
There was heated debate, according to the emails back I got. But in the end, it was a partisan vote. The phone companies had lobbied the hell out the Republicans, convinced them that net neutrality would be a new regulation of the net, when it was far less intrusive than the old dial-up phone regulation which gave birth to the net. It was also less intrusive than what the cable and phone companies will do to the internet.
This will likely kill VOIP. Vonnage will seem so much noisier and slower and louder than the Comcast voice over internet....
This will likely kill video over IP. The cable companies spent a lot on the wires. They don't want competition.
The vote was 11 to 11. The only Republican voting for it: Snowe.
Next the battle moves to the Senate Floor. It is an uphill battle.