Good news…Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon (D) has placed a hold (an informal notification of intent to filibuster) on the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 (S.2686) that just came out of the Senate Commerce Committe. While in committee, a Net Neutrality amendment was defeated 11-11. After reading the committe remarks from Sen. Stevens (the sponsor of the bill), I’m VERY afraid…this guy has sponsored legislation that would impose major legislative changes on our telecommunications infrastructure (not to mention My Damn InterWeb!) without…um…the slightest idea what he’s talking about:
…I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially. …

Oh yes, that’s just a taste. there’s more to the transcript, if you’re brave. If we’re going to be monkeying around with this stuff, let’s try to at least understand what we’re trying to regulate, eh?

Lots more info at Save The Internet, if you’re interested. Full disclosure; being of a strongly libertarian bent, I’m certainly not a fan of regulation in general. I’m reviewing both sides closely; but this appears to be one of those places where we’ve already effectively granted a virtual monopoly via legislation…which causes some market solutions to be ineffective. We’ll have to see; it is CERTAINLY worth talking about.