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.