If you haven’t heard of Robert Pepper, he is a former chief of policy development at the FCC, and a highly influential one at that. Today he’s a senior director at Cisco. And wouldn’t you know it — he’s just the latest respected Internet expert to question the wisdom of a far-reaching net neutrality law.

In a column for TechNewsWorld this week, he makes a compelling and consumer-centric case for letting the Internet develop without governmental interference:

Unfortunately, one key constituency often seems left out of this heated debate: the Internet consumer. This oversight is striking since it is end users who, each day, rely on the Internet to conduct their work and personal lives. What policies should be enacted to ensure their maximum choice and flexibility? Consumer empowerment is where the debate should begin — and end. … The supporters of net neutrality regulation believe that more rules are necessary. In their view, without greater regulation, service providers might parcel out bandwidth or services, creating a bifurcated world in which the wealthy enjoy first-class Internet access, while everyone else is left with slow connections and degraded content.

That scenario, however, is a false paradigm. Such an all-or-nothing world doesn’t exist today, nor will it exist in the future. Without additional regulation, service providers are likely to continue doing what they are doing. They will continue to offer a variety of broadband service plans at a variety of price points to suit every type of consumer.

In realty, the fears of those pushing for regulation have no real basis. Indeed, the regulation they seek could itself cause serious unintended consequences and harm to the Internet. Pepper explains:

Current policy further empowers consumers by encouraging maximum industry innovation in terms of service plans, packages, applications and other products. It does not set terms, price or conditions — or issue other dictates regarding services and devices connected to the Internet — which is a good thing. … In contrast, new net neutrality regulation could have the perverse effect of degrading all levels of service or freezing in place the current state of providers and services. Companies would find it more difficult to differentiate themselves, offer new services, and enter new markets, a situation that would be anti-competitive and counterproductive for consumers.

Like Hands Off the Internet, he endorses the four principles of the Internet as a “consumer bill of rights.” And he should, after all — he helped develop them.

So Cisco just picked up IronPort for a cool $830 million. IronPort operates a system it modestly calls “the world’s largest email and Web threat detection network and database.” Basically, it’s a blacklist that helps keep out the Internet’s known bad guys.

Why care? Take a look:

• Worldwide spam increased from 31 billion daily messages in October 2005 to 61 billion per day in October 2006.

• The average spam size has grown from 8.9KB to 13KB, a 46% increase.

• Bandwidth used by spam increased from 275 terabytes per day to 819 terabytes per day, an increase of nearly 200%.

(Source: IronPort survey, November 15, 2006)

All this points to two obvious conclusions. First, spam is placing a growing stress on the Internet. Second, unless you love those pitches for Viagra, the notion that “all Internet content is equal” makes about as much sense that pitch you just got for a penny stock that’s about to return 300% next week.