The Telecommunications and Internet subcommittee of the the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing today on H.R. 5353, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008. The bill would establish an official national broadband policy, one that prevents service providers from subjecting lawful content to "unreasonable interference" or "discrimination." It also calls on the Federal Communications Commission to assess competition in and consumer access to broadband Internet access in light of this policy. The testimony at the hearing, however, suggested that these provisions, and net neutrality in general, means very different things to different groups. And, as far as the RIAA is concerned, net neutrality legislation could hamstring the fight against piracy.

Representative Edward Markey (D-MA), a sponsor of the bill and chair of the subcommittee, left little doubt that the IFPA is about a specific vision of net neutrality. "Now we are faced with a choice," he said in his opening statement, "Can we preserve this wildly successful medium and the freedom it embodies, or do we permit network operators to fundamentally alter how the Internet has historically functioned?" Markey presented the neutral Internet as an enabler of innovation, and contrasted it with a future in which, "in the name of network management, policymakers permit carriers to act in unreasonable, anti-competitive fashion."

Telcos, not surprisingly, beg to differ. Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, was one of the witnesses testifying, and his past testimony regarding a similar Senate bill reveal that he's apparently operating in an entirely different universe than Markey. From his perspective, mandated net neutrality would somehow suppress all incentive for ISPs to expand broadband access. He accused companies like Yahoo and Google, which flourished in the broadband market, of trying to "foreclose any new business model that would enable new entrants to challenge them." From McSlarrow's perspective, network management, far from ensuring neutrality, is a form of innovation that will somehow bring the next generation of Internet into being.

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