Sorry for the drought in blog posts, folks. We’re back from the holidays and as a first order of business, please check out Hands Off co-chair Chris Wolf’s recent interview with Tony Sklar on BNetTV.

Stay tuned. We’re tanned, rested and ready.

This past week, the Hands Off the Internet participated at the 2007 NXTcomm convention in Chicago, Illinois. NXTcomm is cosponsored by the US Telecom and Telecommunications Industry Association and is one of the most well attended telecommunications trade shows of the year, featuring more than 450 exhibitors and 20,000 attendees.

Hands Off educated NXTcomm attendees and hosted a booth on the expo floor and a net neutrality reception on Wednesday, June 20th where Co-Chair Chris Wolf spoke to a large and attentive crowd. Pictured below are Wolf and the winner of the iPod Raffle, Benny Sun of InfoEX World Services, Ltd.

You may have to click fast to hear it, but our own Hands Off the Internet co-chairman Chris Wolf was on WTOP radio this week to talk about the future of the broadband, the coming bandwidth crunch, and how to pay for the next generation of the Internet.

Click here and look for the third item, or right-click here to download the segment as audio MP3.

According to National Journal, the usual suspects are up in arms about the FCC’s notice of inquiry. Why? Because

the agency’s involvement is a “notice of inquiry” and not a rulemaking. The difference is substantial: Inquiries gather data, while rulemakings consider policy changes.

But why is this a mistake? Everybody agrees that there are no actual problems with net neutrality, and as our own Chris Wolf explained last week, it doesn’t make sense to fashion legislative remedies to situations that don’t actually need remedying. If anything, it just shows that the supporters of net neutrality laws are looking for any avenue possible to impose restrictions on ISPs that would benefit the big online content companies. Whether through the Senate, through the FCC, through the state legislatures, it doesn’t really matter. Any opportunity to regulate the Internet is one they want to pursue.

There is no consensus that we need new rules to govern the Internet, and net neutrality fans should be encouraged that the FCC is looking into it at all, despite their stated skepticism. One imagines that if the FCC ultimately decides that still, no new rules are necessary, the same usual suspects will cry foul then, as they are doing now. That’s one reason it’s so hard to take them seriously.

Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti may be able to conjure something from nothing in the movies, but in real life it’s a bit harder. Not that it’s stopped supporters of Internet regulations from claiming that there will be problems if a “net neutrality” law hasn’t passed.

Luckily, our own Chris Wolf published an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune (that’s the overseas version of the New York Times) last week titled “The illusion of ‘net neutrality.’” Pointing out basic facts of court law, he makes it clear why it would be such a mistake to take them seriously:

[C]ourts regularly are confronted with theoretical conflicts that have not yet occurred and they regularly refrain from meddling. As a matter of prudence, the judicial branch of government will not rule on such cases as they are not “ripe” for review. Claims that rest upon future events that may never occur routinely are thrown out of court.

One reason courts refrain is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to fashion appropriate remedies in the abstract without harming the parties and the public interest.

In policymaking, too, in the absence of a real problem, there is a substantial risk of “solutions” harming the companies making the investment in - and responsible for - the Internet infrastructure, and of harming the public interest in the rapid build-out of the next-generation Internet.

Without knowing what constitutes a bull’s eye, it is difficult if not impossible to aim relief. The courts know this to be the case when they are presented with hypotheticals. In the case of regulated “Net neutrality,” policymakers would be wise to exercise similar restraint. To imagine a new department of Internet regulation is to glimpse the nightmare of unintended consequences.

When you have common sense on your side, you don’t need to be a magician. And unless you can see the future, a wait-and-see approach makes the most sense of all.