Is Google finally running out of goodwill with federal regulators and others?

First, the search giant ran afoul of the Department of Justice in its proposed settlement with the Authors Guild over its book scanning plans.

Now comes word that the FCC is investigating AT&T complaint’s that Google Voice may be improperly blocking calls in some rural areas. The Washington Post has it here.

On a company blog, Google’s Washington lawyer Richard Whitt posted a response, in which he basically says Google is blocking some callers from its free network application because they’re abusing it – using it for sex chat lines and free conference call centers and taking up bandwith that could be used by more needy users, like soldiers or homeless people.

But some say Google’s play-by-its-own-rules and “trust us” philosophy may be running out of steam. It’s one thing for two guys with a funny-sounding start-up to operate that way, of course; it’s entirely different when you’re the biggest and most powerful company in the digital world.

Here’s how John M. Simpson of Consumer Watchdog put it after the advocacy group announced its recent support of the Justice Department in the book scanning case:

“A single entity cannot be allowed to build a digital library based on a monopolistic advantage when its answer to serious questions from responsible critics boils down to: “Trust us. Our motto is ‘Don’t be evil.’”

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.

Genachowski

New FCC Chairman Julius  Genachowski, in his first major policy speech, declared that the FCC plans to take steps to prevent Internet providers such as AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and others from discriminating against particular Internet content or  applications. It also will take steps to ensure that Internet access providers are transparent about the network management practices they implement – meaning Internet providers will have to let users know their specific rules and how they plan to enforce those rules when it comes to using their broadband pipes.

“This is not about government regulation of the Internet,” Genachowski said in prepared remarks. “It’s about fair rules of the road for companies that control access to the Internet. We will do as much as we need to do, and no more, to ensure that the Internet remains an unfettered platform for competition, creativity, and  entrepreneurial activity.

“This is about  preserving and maintaining something profoundly successful and ensuring that it’s not distorted  or undermined,” he said. “If we wait too long to preserve a free and open Internet, it will be too late.”

See Genachowski’s full speech here.

Genachowski said the FCC will begin formulating its new net neutrality rules beginning next month, after seeking public comment. To facilitate what’s sure to be heated public debate, the FCC has opened an Web site at www.openinternet.gov.

Don’t expect the big Internet providers to be neutral on the issue of net neutrality. They want as much control as they can over who uses their broadband pipes, how much bandwidth they suck up and what they use it for. They’ve been lobbying the lawmakers and the FCC heavily in recent years – and that will only increase in the weeks to come.

How it all shakes out may change how Web-based companies – everybody from Google Inc. to the smallest of e-tailers – uses the Internet, how much they pay for it, and what they do with it.

On Aug. 28, the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission began levying a $200 a day fine on Facebook for failing to comply with a subpoena to provide information on a Virginia flight attendant who filed a worker’s comp claim after tripping, falling and injuring her back getting off a Colgan Air regional jet at Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport back in January.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch has the story here.  CNET’s Declan McCullah goes into more detail here about how private and public insurers are increasingly eyeing Facebook and other social networking sites when reviewing  insurance claims.

The gist of it comes down to the basic rule of social networking: Whatever you post on line may come back to haunt you later.

If you file a worker’s comp claim saying your hurt your back on the job, and then post on your Facebook page or Twitter about your big win on the basketball court or the ski trip to Aspen, insurers want to know about it.

While the Virginia case indicates states are willing to go only so far in getting back records from social networking sites, there’s little to keep government agencies, insurers – and everybody else – from seeing more recent records on what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

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.

“We’re in a real risk in the United States because we had a technology system to create the Internet and (make the U.S.) a world leader,” said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “We don’t have that anymore.”

Institutions like Bell Labs and DARPA that encouraged and supported the shared development that created the Internet just aren’t around – at least like they were – anymore, Atkinson pointed out.

“DARPA is more narrowly focused on defense, and Bell Labs is a shell of what it was.” he said.

Robert Atkinson

Atkinson, like others, said he thinks government, academia and private industry needs to work together and do more R&D on ways to make the Internet better and bolder in the future.

Richard Green, former president and CEO of CableLabs, agrees. He encouraged government, academia and business to create a new sort of research institution to try and figure out what the best direction is for the next new Internet and how to get there.

Of course that would take money – something that the government has been unwilling to devote in large amounts to Internet R&D. That has to addressed in any national broadband plan if the United States is to resume its lead in all things involving the Internet, experts here say.

The amount of government spending on Internet R&D today, said MIT’s Clark, “is miserable.”

Van Jacobson, research fellow at the Palo Alto Research Center, wonders if it’s too late for the United States to retain the lead on the development and exploitation of the Internet, given the exodus of R&D labs and government-sponsored research to other countries.

“I think we’ve lost a lot of people in this country who think long term,” Jacobson said. “And we in the US particularly (are) going to feel the pain of that loss as we see that (next generation of) research come from overseas.”

In an interview with InformationWeek, the government’s top IT procurement official says about $20 million in taxpayer money will be wasted this month alone because of the delay in transitioning to a new Networx bandwith administration program. All told, the government is wasting millions in dragging its feet in the Networx switch-over, according to Ed O’Hare, assistant commissioner for the Federal Acquisition Service’s Integrated Technology Services division.

There’s definitely some real money going out in the switch-over from the government’s transition off of its legacy FTS2001 network system.

InformationWeek reports that NASA recently awarded a $14.2 million contract to Qwest. The State Department picked AT&T for a $45 million.

Yet it’s not going out fast enough, according to O’Hare. The government first announced the switch from the FTS 2001 network system to the cheaper, more flexible Networx system in 2007. The transition is supposed to be complete by 2010, but that’s likely to be significantly delayed.

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.

A recent memo from Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (aka the keeper of President Obama’s purse strings) to all federal agencies gives some general clues where the White House is wanting and willing to invest in technology in the next fiscal year.

The bottom line: Wherever it can create jobs, better the economy or make people healthier. Click on the memo below to read it yourself.