"Imagine if the leaders of 16th century Germany, feeling threatened by the democratizing forces of the printing press, had taken Gutenberg's invention and limited its use to those they politically agreed with -- or if Luther had to pay licensing fees for nailing up his 95 Theses on every church door in Germany."
- Craig Newmark on Net Neutrality

The U.S. House of Representatives definitively rejected extensive Net neutrality regulations in a 269-152 vote. The approved bill also prohibits the FCC from creating rules to require it. Net Neutrality would prevent cable and telephone companies from turning the internet into a "tiered" service.

Now the telecommunications bill approved by the House heads to the Senate, where Sen. Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who heads a key committee, has been an ally. But in an apparent nod to companies like Amazon.com, eBay and Google that are pressing for Net neutrality rules, Stevens did say last week that he might be willing to bend and consider more regulations. The Senate will hold hearings Tuesday.

An alliance whose membership ranges from the Christian Coalition to MoveOn.org is demanding that Congress write this neutrality into law. FreedomWorks, a lobbying organization opposed to network neutrality laws, hailed the House vote.

C/Net interviewed Verizon lobbyist, Thomas Tauke:

Q: What's your reading of Thursday night's vote in the House?

Tauke: We were very encouraged by the vote on Net neutrality, not only because it was a strong vote rejecting the Markey amendment, but also because we had 30 percent of the Democrats join us despite really strong pressure from the Democratic leader. We felt that in both cases the votes were strong and set the right policy direction.

(Editor's note: Rep. Ed Markey had offered the amendment mandating Net neutrality that was far more extensive than the rules already present in the bill. Click here for PDF of the amendment.)

So now we start talking about the Senate, which is sometimes more difficult to predict.

Tauke: The Senate is always an interesting challenge because the process is more open. We'll see how it unfolds.

It's fair to say that Stevens is committed to moving a bill. He'll probably have a new draft in the next few days. He seems anxious to have the committee move in the next few weeks and have it to the floor in July. That's a tight time frame.

Our hope is that Sen. Stevens and the committee will see the wisdom of trying to hold this bill to a relatively narrow set of issues rather than have it become a bill that addresses all of the issues that arise in the telecom space.

Do you think there's enough time before the November election for a final vote to happen?

Tauke: The big challenge is a floor vote in the Senate. If you can get the Senate to act on the issue, the chances of getting a bill through (a conference committee) are very high. The real challenge from a procedural perspective is being able to move through the Senate floor, in part because of the nature of the Senate and the need for relative consensus to develop.

"Companies calling for net neutrality are hardly neutral and they are far from disinterested observers in this debate," said Scott Cleland, chairman of NetCompetition.org.

The Washington Post says Congress should stay out of cyberspace. OregonLive editorializes against Net Neutrality with "pro" Commentary. Advance/Newhouse Communications -- which owns the Oregonian -- is linked in a joint mobile partnership with Sprint Nextel. The newspaper never mentioned that fact.

Read more at: http://dailywireless.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5523&src=rss10.