Today’s Los Angeles Times has an article on how net neutrality proposals are causing deep concern among songwriters and other entertainers. The fear is that today’s Congressional proposals will undercut the “smart network” technologies necessary to reduce illegal online activity, including copyright infringement, that have devastated the music community in recent years.

Draw your own conclusions but for our part, the evidence to back up the concern about illegal activity is overwhelming.

And since we’re on the subject, here’s a recent reminder of Net neutrality’s real stakes from Rick Carnes at the Songwriters Guild of America:

“The massive amount of copyright piracy taking place on the Internet is killing the songwriting profession. If a content neutral technological fix can be instituted to help curtail this horrendous situation, we are all for it. Without the adequate means and the will to protect copyrighted works on the Internet, the incentive to create will be completely destroyed. And our culture – and the marketplace of ideas that the Constitution seeks to foster – will be eviscerated along with it.”

For Carnes’ excellent testimony to Congress last March, click here.

At a Congressional hearing on Net Neutrality back in 2006, proponents couldn’t get their answers straight when asked to define the concept. Two years later, evidently not much has changed:

Jonathan Rintels writes this week at SaveTheInternet that Net Neutrality is “a requirement that broadband Internet consumers be permitted to access the lawful content of their choice.” We agree. But if that’s the definition, then this Net Neutrality fight is over since consumers already have that right.

Google blogged a different approach recently, saying that prioritizing some types of traffic over others is completely consistent with Net Neutrality – a comment at odds with the “all data is equal” crowd. Though it’s correct about that, Google’s problem is its position that Net users, not the company, should pick up the tab for the new pipes that need to be built to handle its video content.

Then there’s Net Neutrality advocate Susan Crawford, who testified on the Hill last week. She’s argued that content-based regulation couldn’t be done without “a heavy handed regulator.” (She’s right.) So that’s why Net Neutrality requires government policies “separating transport from other activities, and separating access from backbone and backhaul transport….”

Net Neutrality advocates can help clear up the confusion by acknowledging at least this: Writing the regulations that would govern how data traffic travels across the Internet will give an army of Washington lawyers and lobbyists a lifetime guarantee of full employment.

A recent Denver Post editorial discusses the two sides of the Net Neutrality battle that is returning to Capitol Hill. Citing “a legitimate need [for service providers] to modulate traffic during peak hours,” the Op-Ed urges caution in backing the “stalking horse” legislation proposed by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., as it would restrictively dictate “how service providers are to manage traffic”:

We think a delicate balancing of the interests [of service providers and Net neutrality proponents] is the best course. Congress ought to create a venue for redress if users feel they’ve been unfairly put in the Internet “slow lane.”

But go too far in taking away providers’ ability to shape traffic and tier pricing and you risk removing the economic incentive for capacity expansion.

The evolving nature of the Internet and the potential it has as an economic platform and venue for exchange of ideas must be protected. But it would be foolhardy to tamper too much with the economic structure that has driven its growth.

Scott Cleland has a great one-pager on the net neutrality debate, explaining why it shouldn’t be considered a political issue. As he puts it well, it’s a “a fringe issue and a factional business dispute.” Nor is it sound policy from either a Democratic or Republican perspective. Click here to read it online in PDF format.

BusinessWeek highlights the latest Andrew Odlyzko paper (PDF) on Net Neutrality, which makes a pretty odd argument…

The general conclusion is that some form of government intervention, to set the rules, is inevitable. (And at some point it may be welcomed by the players, just as government intervention was welcomed in the end by the railroads.)

Well, yes, government intervention was welcomed in the end by the railroads. That’s because, as Timothy B. Lee pointed out in the New York Times, whatever the good intentions of those who sought to regulate the market, the result was, as a Ralph Nader group described it, “primarily a forum at which transportation interests divide up the national transportation market.” Lee explained further at Ars Technica…

The railroads were the high-tech industry of their day, and there was a lot of concern in the 1870s and 1880s that the railroads had become too monopolistic. Congress responded by creating the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887, giving it the power to regulate the railroads. … [Yet] the story of the ICC does not have a happy ending. After President Grover Cleveland appointed Thomas M. Cooley, a railroad ally, as its first chairman, the Commission quickly fell under the control of the railroads, gradually transforming the American transportation industry into a cartel. By 1935, when it was given oversight of the trucking industry, the commission was restricting competition and enabling price increases throughout virtually the entire surface transportation industry.

Indeed, more than 100 years later, taxpayers are still subsidizing railroads. You might begin to imagine now why the regulation was “welcomed in the end by the railroads.” If you’re still having trouble, close your eyes and count to $2,000,000,000. That’s how much taxpayer money Amtrak now receives every year. Out of your pocket.

Andrew Odlyzko is right that government intervention was eventually welcomed by the railroads. However, we don’t think “the players will like it because they can create a cartel like the railroad industry did” is a very compelling argument for net neutrality. It’s certainly not an argument we expect consumers and taxpayers to find persuasive.

Now this is a breath of fresh air from America’s heartland:

“Though attempts are being made to position net neutrality as pro-consumer, in reality it is very anti-consumer. With net neutrality, Web-based companies would avoid compensating network owners for use of their facilities, leaving consumers and network owners to pay those costs. This would force the majority of consumers to pay for the high costs driven by a minority of Internet users….”

The author is Dan Hesse, CEO of Kansas-based Embarq, who penned this great column on the absurdity of net neutrality for the current issue of Chief Executive. As Hesse notes, in 2007 alone, communications companies are investing $70 billion to upgrade the country’s network infrastructure. With America already behind more than a dozen other nations in broadband access, such investment is indispensable and, as Hesse rightly observes, this investment would not continue if Congress enacts net neutrality pricing regulations.

Less than 10 years ago, wired broadband costs ran as high as $60 a month and wireless broadband was a myth. Today, inflation-adjusted prices have plunged 50 percent or more depending on location, while choices have expanded and wireless has become an instant mass-market phenom. Given this, Hesse’s warnings about the cost to consumers of net neutrality’s ultimate cost seem not only correct but downright commonsensical.

Incidentally, on this lovely fall afternoon, we’ll throw another bouquet to the company: that green “origami jet” logo is really cool.

There was something almost surreal in this week’s Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing on FTC reauthorization.

These hearings are usually like a kabuki dance but without all the spontaneity. This year, though, with subprime and other financial scams harming millions, it was dismaying to see a couple of well-known consumer advocates testifying about… net neutrality?

Leave aside the obvious question of how shifting broadband deployment costs from corporations to consumers would benefit consumers. The undeniable fact is that scammers are getting more sophisticated and, as the