As everybody knows by now, Andrew McLaughlin from Google said recently,

Cutting the FCC out the picture would probably be a smart move. It is much better to think of this as an FTC or unfair competition type of problem.

As others have said, this is an important and encouraging shift, and we’ll be watching Google as the conversation moves forward. But this brings strident net neutrality advocate David Isenberg to dust off a ditty he penned last year:

Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and Skype,
They’re already successful, they can make deals for those pipes.
But when I want to publish stuff in my blog
It will not be OK for you to once again pay.
We already pay for our Internet connection.
We don’t need to subsidize a dying industry’s obsession!
If looking at my blog cost you an extra dime
You’d probably find another way to spend your time.

Well, sure, if that was the issue. Isenberg looks a little silly compared to his usual ally, Kevin Werbach, who writes:

What Google’s global policy counsel (and in full disclosure, my friend and law school classmate) Andrew McLaughlin said to kick of the firestorm was that differentiated quality of service (QOS) is OK, as long as it’s available to anyone who will pay. This is no different than the current situation, where all major websites pay a content delivery network (CDN) such as Akamai, or pay to self-provision a CDN, in order to deliver popular content quickly and efficiently to their users. Those who don’t pay for CDNs are disadvantaged, just like those who don’t buy enough bandwidth for their network connections, but that’s their economic choice. … So, put aside all the conspiracy theories. If supporters of network neutrality don’t have room in their big tent for the view Andrew expressed, they are really in trouble.

Not a bad point. The argument over net neutrality has developed a lot over the past year, and anybody still afraid that an Internet provider is going to cut you off from your favorite blog is unable to keep up with the times.

One thing this means is that Dorgan-Snowe, the Senate bill kicked around since last year, is itself out-of-step with the current landscape. Will net neutrality supporters ask that it be withdrawn? Maybe not – but it would be in their best interest to do so.

How bad is that Skype/eBay “wireless net neutrality” petition to the FCC we’ve been talking about the last few days? Tech Liberation Front (a great blog you should be reading, if you aren’t already) gives good gist:

The Skype-Wu proposal would foreclose such marketplace experimentation by essentially converting cellular networks into a sort of quasi-commons and forcing private network operators to provide network access or services on someone else’s terms.

What does that mean in the big picture? TLF has one idea:

In my opinion, when you get right down to it, this proposal is a declaration of surrender. That is, Skype and Prof. Wu almost seem to be saying that while it’s nice we’ve seen innovation at the core of the wireless sector over the past two decades, we now need to get on with the important business of establishing rules to ensure the maximum amount of output or innovation at the edge of networks while largely ignoring what happens at the core, or even prohibiting certain things from happening at the core. In other words, to maximize the freedom to innovate at the edge of networks, we must now restrict the freedom to innovate at the core in some ways.

And of course, the same is true with “wired net neutrality.” The regulationist side likes to claim they are protecting innovation, but what the companies pushing hardest — Google, eBay and Amazon — really want to do is freeze the market where it is now, with each at the top of their own game.

Regulation rarely is good for any kind of competition, let alone prohibitionist regulation like the Dorgan-Snowe bill under consideration in the Senate now. Online and on the airwaves, it still makes the most sense to hold off and deal with problems if they ever actually materialize.

Our last post highlighted an article from the popular tech website TechDirt that made a true and compelling argument against “wireless net neutrality.” That article also touched on a humorously self-serving petition to the FCC by Skype, the peer-to-peer online telephone service. Here’s the relevant section:

As far as Skype’s petition to the FCC, the less said about this blatant publicity stunt, the better. It’s not really clear why this is so important to Skype: a Windows Mobile version of its client software has been available for a long time, and is pretty much open to US mobile users with compatible Windows Mobile devices. It’s got little room to expand outside that niche, since its CEO says the company can’t seem to get the hang of mobile development. Also, it’s a little ironic that Skype’s demanding openness and use of standards, when it’s eschewed so many standards in the VoIP space, like SIP, in favor of proprietary technologies and systems it refuses to open up.

If you didn’t already know, Skype is owned by eBay, a close ally of Google, which is also not above silly attempts to go on the offensive on this issue. As Scott Cleland at Precursor Blog has been pointing out for months, both have adopted a “neutrality for thee but not for me” attitude. Here’s Cleland, on the same wacky petition:

While most everyone else is looking to see how competition policy is working and how it might be improved, eBay-Skype said in FTC testimony last week, by eBay-Skype official Tod Cohen, that even a competitive market of 4-5 providers won’t solve the problems of limitations on wireless devices by wireless carriers.

Got that? The regulationists have gone from arguing that the broadband marketplace is an unacceptable “duopoly” to declaring that even a quintopoly is not competition enough. Just more evidence that there’s nothing they won’t say to muddy this issue.