In case you missed Tim Karr's diary yesterday, here's the bad news, as reported in the Wall Street Journal.
WASHINGTON–Federal Communications Commission officials are quietly holding talks with phone and cable companies about a legislative compromise that would give the agency authority over Internet lines without the need to adopt a controversial proposal to reregulate Internet lines.
FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus and other senior FCC staffers are holding closed-door meetings with a small group of lobbyists representing Internet providers, including AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and Internet services providers, such as Google Inc. and Internet phone provider Skype Ltd.
The negotiations revolve around a possible legislative compromise that would avoid wholesale changes in how the FCC regulates Internet lines but still give the agency the ability to enforce net neutrality rules, which would prevent Internet providers from deliberately slowing or blocking Internet traffic....
Public-interest groups were fuming about the private meetings with industry lobbyists, however. The agency did not invite any public-interest groups to attend the negotiation sessions.
Hopefully the FCC, and the administration, will remedy that situation soon and invite public-interest groups to attend the negotiations, in the name of transparency, if nothing else.
Pressure on the FCC has come from all sides to cave into the telecomms, including from several dozen Dems in the House who should know better. But this doesn't appear to be the third way approach FCC Chair Genachowski promised last month. Unless when the FCC said that it would "only apply a few of the regulations under that portion of law," they meant only the ones that AT&T and Verizon would agree to. Which would be very, very bad news for the rest of us.