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Of course the big Internet companies don’t like it, because it would limit their ability to control who uses their broadband pipes and potentially, how much they can charge.

Now one of their biggest backers, Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, is coming to their aid.

The ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee has introduced an amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill that would prohibit the FCC from expending funds to develop and implement new regulatory mandates – namely its forthcoming net neutrality rules that chairman Julius Genachowski announced Monday.

Hutchinson

“I am deeply concerned by the direction the FCC appears to be heading,” she said in a statement. “Even during a severe downturn, America has experienced robust investment and innovation in network performance and online content and applications. For that innovation to continue, we must tread lightly when it comes to new regulations.”

Hutchison’s amendment is co-sponsored by some Republican heavy hitters, including Sens. John Ensign (R-Nev.), Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), David Vitter (R-La.), Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and John Thune (R-S.D.).

Good Morning Silicon Valley has a great roundup of other opponents to the FCC’s plans to start enforcing net neutrality.

Bottom line is this: The fight’s already brewing over the FCC’s net neutrality plans. We’ll soon see how much clout the deep-pocketed Internet and communications companies – and their influential backers like Hutchison – have now that Democrats and the Obama Aministration rules Washington.

WASHINGTON – As the Federal Communications Commission works on developing a national broadband plan, it invited a group of Internet heavy-hitters to its headquarters here today to hear to discuss what they think is the “next big idea” on the Internet’s horizon.

David Clark

The skinny is this: It doesn’t matter, unless the government, industry and academia does more to help develop the next-generation Internet.

David Clark, a super-smart professor and senior research scientist at MIT, pointed out how recent innovations – first music, then video – constantly put new increasing stresses on the availability and stability of the Internet.

What’s next? Who knows, Clark and others said. But it will probably put even more stresses on an Internet that at 40 years old is starting to show its signs of age.

“We could argue if video is the end of the world,” Clark said. “I don’t think so. Because never before has the road ended.”

The biggest constraint making the Internet better and ready to meet the needs of the next new thing is that the resources and infrastructure that brought about the Internet initially just simply aren’t around anymore, some say. Read more »

WASHINGTON – Telemarketers beware: Beginning Sept. 1,  “robocalls” are illegal.

A year after the Federal Trade Commission announced rules prohibiting prerecorded commercial telemarketing calls to consumers, it’s about to get serious and start fining violators up to $16,000 per call.

There are plenty exemptions. If the robocaller is delivering purely informational recordings – such as a notification of flight being canceled, for instance, that’s OK. So are calls from companies that consumers have agreed to take calls from (on opt-in agreements and elsewhere) as well as – of course – political campaign calls. See more on the new rule here.