shouting loudly

House Judiciary Committee votes for net neutrality

Good news! Unfortunately, it may have been partially for the “wrong” reasons: Judiciary members spoke out about defending their turf in order to preserve their ability to oversee antitrust enforcement.

Barton’s bill (see my opinion here), passed by Energy & Commerce, gives the FCC the “exclusive authority” to address the issue. Of course, it also strips the Commission of any real ability to do anything substantive about the problem. Judiciary Chair James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), keen to preserve or even expand his committee’s role overseeing antitrust enforcement, is really just defending his turf.

But many of the committee members really do believe in network neutrality, and the others have supported it publicly once and are therefore probably reasonably solid allies from now on. (See Cialdini for more on how public commitment leads to persuasion; summary here.) In other words, this thing finally has a real shot.

Full story here at CNet.