Senate to Tackle Net Neutrality This Week - Page 2

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Leading the charge for legislation is the public interest group Free Press, which heads the umbrella organization SaveTheInternet.com. Craig Aaron, communications director for Free Press, is hopeful that the recent evidence of preferential network management from ISPs such as Comcast and AT&T has set the stage for the Dorgan/Snowe bill to begin moving through the Senate.

"Since the bill was reintroduced early in this Congress, things have become a lot clearer," Craig Aaron, communications director for Free Press told InternetNews.com "We used to face the argument that Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem. Well, now we've found the problem."

A long, uncertain road

Any form of Net neutrality legislation faces a long and uncertain road. The Senate bill is assured of a contentious markup process before it has a chance to emerge from committee. Then, garnering the 60 votes required to pass is a very real challenge, given that Snowe is the lone Republican co-sponsor of a bill along with Dorgan and several other Democrats.

Markey's bill in the House is a different version, which means that if both were to pass, the two chambers would have to agree on a common final format, which would then return to the respective floors for another vote.

Nevertheless, with discontent still simmering over the Comcast/BitTorrent flap, some lawmakers are ready to renew the fight in Congress. Blogging on the site firedoglake.com on Friday, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) promised that Net neutrality would play a big part in Tuesday's hearing, and sought to defuse the industry's argument that regulation would put unnecessary restraints on a fast-growing economy.

"Look, this doesn’t mean we’re going to apply a prescriptive, heavy-handed bureaucratic approach to how network providers are permitted to serve subscribers," Kerry wrote. "But we need to insist on basic fairness and an open, content-neutral approach to how users can access the backbone of our telecommunications system."