What’s that sound? Is it the sound of another think tank concluding that net neutrality laws could be disastrous? Yes it is — this week the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Policy Studies (whew!) reached its own conclusion on what regulations like the Dorgan-Snowe bill could bring.

Lawrence Spiwak, president of the Phoenix Center, said:

The growing capacity demands of video on the Internet, coupled with the pernicious increase of spam and viruses, threaten an on-line traffic jam. To maximize bandwidth, operators need the flexibility to meet the different needs with different types of services. But many network neutrality proposals mandate rigidity.

Or as the report’s abstract puts it,

‘network neutrality’ proposals … seek to mandate an inflexible set of rules that would foreclose or severely limit many market transactions. Our model reveals that under plausible conditions, rules that prohibit efficient commercial transactions between content and broadband service providers could, in fact, be bad for all participants: consumers would pay higher prices, the profits of the broadband service provider would decline, and the sales of Internet content providers would also decline. Moreover, rules that prohibit the market from contracting efficiently may shift sales from content providers to the broadband provider’s content affiliate, a result entirely inconsistent with the stated desire of network neutrality proponents.

Got that? Net neutrality is not only a terrible idea that would hurt everybody involved, the likely actual effects of net neutrality regulations could actually bring about the world of ISP-centric online services that supporters of Dorgan-Snowe fear. With evidence like this mounting, we’re surprised they continue to back such an obviously flawed bill.

To read the full thing in PDF form, click here.

Like the Deloitte & Touche report last month, or the many independent experts and Internet pioneers including Robert Kahn and Dave Farber, by the time we get to Phoenix there are plenty of expert voices calling for the government to refrain from messing with the Internet. But more are always welcome.