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Net Neutrality bill is introduced in the US Congress
A BILL labeled HR5353 (pdf) entitled the "Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008" has been introduced in the US House of Representatives, cosponsored by Democrat Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Republican Chip Pickering of Mississippi.
The bipartisan legislation establishes Net Neutrality as the explicit national policy of the US government. It amends Title I of the Communications Act of 1934 to "maintain the freedom to use... the Internet, without unreasonable interference from or discrimination by network operators..." as well as "guard against unreasonable discriminatory favoritism for, or degradation of, content by network operators based upon its source, ownership, or destination...."
The bill also directs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to hold at least eight broadband summits in various sites across the country next year to gather public input on appropriate policies to "promote openness, competition, innovation, and affordable, ubiquitous broadband service for all individuals in the United States."
Forcing the FCC to actually listen to ordinary citizens is intended to diminish the baleful influence of telecom industry lawyers, lobbyists and front groups. Phone companies like AT&T and Verizon and cable companies such as Comcast and Time Warner have paid millions trying to subvert Net Neutrality and introduce "network management" practices that will enable them to exercise control over the Internet for their own advantage and profit.
If the telecom and cable companies succeed in gaining "network management" control over the Internet, they will be empowered to act as toll collectors on the US national network infrastructure that was designed and developed primarily with public funds for the equitable benefit of all citizens.
The bill was proposed just as the FCC is conducting an investigation of Co mcast over the company's apparent blocking of its subscribers' file-sharing traffic. ยต
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Free Press
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Comcast
tries to stonewall the FCC
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The bill is toothless posturing. It contains no specific rules. It just tells the FCC to go out to the hinterlands and make a show of listening to users' complaints. Nothing will come of it.

The only way that has any chance of insuring neutrality is to break the monopoly that the telcos and cablecos hold over internet access. Fat chance of that happening short of armed insurrection.
I'd be interested in what the bill actually accomplishes. Packet shaping isn't a totally bad idea. I think what we need is a way for the packet shaping software to know whether the data is "live," as in, is it being watched or used as it's being delivered? And, if it's live, how live is it?

If I'm playing a game, I want the data to show up ASAP. If I'm watching a Youtube video, it only needs to get there fast enough to keep the video rolling. At the very back of the back is torrents, where I will happily wait 15-20 minutes for a packet to get here, as long as the entire file manages to completely download within 2-3 days.
Senators and representatives don't want their porn throttled any more than anyone else!
This doesn't just affect the United States- it is a worldwide bill. My communications from Australia have to go through the US to reach Europe, Europe reaches Asia-Pacific through the US and the world's main DNS masters are all based in the US.
Hmm, the word "reasonable" in legislation always makes me cringe. It makes legislation so open to interpretation and lawsuites.

I believe in net neutrality very much.
If I am following the argument, the point seems to be that if we give ISPs the tools to enable them to manage their networks, they will inevitably use that power to take away our lunch money and enslave us. Does it really make sense to ban a useful tool just because it might be misused? This bill recognizes that there are legitimate uses for these network management tools, hence the use of the term "reasonable" in the law. A lot of lawyers are going to get rich defining what reasonable means; especially since some will never accept that what Comcast might be reasonable.

ISPs can buy tools that will recognize what type of traffic is on their network and to treat subsets of that traffic in various ways. Comcast is using these tools to try to improve the overall performance of their network when there is congestion. Sure it would be better to prevent network congestion than to try to make congestion more bearable; but there is an undeniable trade off between the amount of congestion and the cost of the network.

People will put up with a reasonable amount of inconvenience to save money. Comcast is betting that customers will accept a certain level of congestion, given the expense of less-congested alternatives. Forbidding Comcast or any other ISP from using tools to mitigate congestion won't make congestion go away; it will just make the average level of service worse at a higher cost.
I can only hope that this passes. I have been fearing this growing trend to give the ISPs more power than they are due. The only network throttling they should ever do is cap maximum throughput based on payment plan. Now if only some would nail ISPs for not delivering low latency bandwidth when contracted to.
The importance of Net neutrality can simply not be over-estimated. If these companies should succeed in regulating the speed by content and how much money the content-provider is willing to dish out for it, that means effectively the end of the internet as we know it. Nothing less.
If you have enough money you can get away with anything in the US. Home of the Free and the Brave not anymore its the home of the Rich and the Poor. If they think that a law to protect the little guy will pass... Good Luck. I guess time will tell but I would bet my left nut it will not.