Senate Commerce Committee tackles Net Neutrality today

Network neutrality will be at the heart of a full Senate Commerce Committee hearing this morning. With the expansive title "The Future of the Internet," lawmakers will debate "developing applications, consumer expectations, and network operation" in light of new evidence by a Silicon Valley startup company that Internet service providers are widely throttling legal peer-to-peer (p-to-p) file sharing. The unexpected Senate committee hearing may signal that lawmakers are ready to debate Internet bills long languishing in Congress. The Senate hearing comes on the heels of last Thursday's Internet neutrality hearing before the Federal Communications Commission at Stanford University. While there was scant "hard evidence" of Internet service providers mismanaging networks introduced at last week's FCC hearing, Vuze, a peer-to-peer video distributor based in Palo Alto, Calif., on Monday released the first findings of its own analysis of how major ISPs are throttling Internet traffic of 8,000 users participating in Vuze's study during one million hours of Internet time. ISPs use the nonstandard and potentially harmful practice of sending false reset packets to artificially interrupt and abort network connections when people are sending legal digital files. Vuze created a software plug-in that could be installed in the Vuze Platform application to monitor all potential network interruptions that a user experiences due to reset messages, not interruptions specifically related to use of the Vuze platform. The data released Monday covers Jan. 1 through April 13.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/22/Senate-committee-tackles-Net-neutrality_1.html

Casting a Wide Net (Washington Post)
Sure, you might expect Stanford law professor Lawrence lessig to appear at a Congressional hearing on the future of the Internet, but Justine Bateman? Mallory? The actress, who also is a writer and producer, is slated to be among the witnesses, and to share her concerns about the way creative content is developed and how it will be distributed in years to come. Bateman is a Screen Actors Guild board member and has recurring roles on "Men in Trees" and "Desperate Housewives." Joining her on the panel will be Patric Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America West, who -- before, during and after the recent Hollywood writers' strike -- has given deep thought to how creative material is distributed online. (A goal of the successful strike was to make sure writers received residuals for programming that appeared on the Internet.) The hearing will focus on developing applications, consumer expectations, network management and discrimination, and how open the Internet should be.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/21/AR2008042102816.html
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Writers stump for net neutrality (Associated Press)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_9011164

The Senate Commerce Committee discusses the Future of the Internet today, and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is a last minute invitee (http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=59628780-7507-4260-b6c6-24c2b028613e&Month=4&Year=2008)

For this and other upcoming media policy events, see http://www.benton.org/calendar/2008/4