Paul Kapustka's Blog

Here's a quick summary of what we know, and why it makes us think net neutrality is going to be around for a bit:

1) The retooled Markey-Eshoo-Boucher-Inslee "net neutrality" amendment that will be offered up will generate a lot of debate, but even a staffer for one of the supporting legislators knows they don't have the votes to make it stick. The main purpose of the effort? For an advantage "down the road," according to the staffer.

2) Even if the Barton bill sans net neutrality language makes it out of the committee, there still needs to be a companion bill out of the Senate before anything becomes law. And even though Senate commerce chairman Ted Stevens has been pushing for some kind of telecom legislation this year, the hangup over net neutrality (which is endorsed by at least one Republican on the Senate committee, Maine's Olympia Snowe) may cause eventual legislation to be watered down or put on hold for more consideration. In fact, one Senator is already endorsing a move forward without addressing net neutrality issues.

3) The idea of delaying things fits in nicely with two important camps on the net neutrality side: Democratic incumbents, who smell blood (and perhaps a return to majority) in the fall elections; and big technology companies like Intel, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and others, who have only just begun to realize that they may have a dog in this hunt after all. Even if their lobbying efforts so far are pale and amateurish compared to the full-court press of the telcos and cable players, the big tech wallets can be quickly brought to bear with the advice of "let's take some more time to get this right."

From our seat, we're still waiting to see how committed the big techs really are to net neutrality ideas. Ray Gifford over at the PFF has already gone on the record claiming that Google will eventually flip-flop on the need for net neutrality laws, since it might hamper the company if and when its long-rumored Wi-Fi-/fiber network surfaces.

There was a limp letter sent by the tech titans to the House committee, who probably turned it over and used it to write down everyone's lunch order. I know I'm not the first to make this point but it bears repeating that: Microsoft is trying to sell its TV software to every telco in sight, including AT&T and Verizon; Yahoo already has broadband partnerships with AT&T and Verizon; eBay owns Skype, which already makes it a target of the telcos; and Google is even willing to "do business" with China, so it can't be too far a reach to expect them to cut deals that make "shareholder sense" with AT&T and Verizon.

Here at our humble little outpost on the Internet, we are now at almost a month and counting in trying to get an official response from Google about AT&T's claim that Google was asking AT&T for preferential video treatment. The silence, as they say, can be deafening. So until Eric Schmidt, Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates and Co. start taking on Ed Whitacre publicly, there's not much of a fight going on.

Thankfully, we don't all just have to stand by silently and whimper. Jeff Pulver, my new employer, has started a unique contest that is looking to reward creative types who come up with their own message for saving the Internet -- betting that the power of the many will outweigh the power of the few, or the one, and produce more meaningful opinions than astroturf supporters or swift-boat specialists.

Get to work! There's still time left on the clock.