Last Thursday, I escorted Randy May to the House Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet hearing on the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006. (Our stamina should be commended because we were in the hearing room for a full seven hours.) Randy was asked to testify and his written testimony can be found here. The bill covers national video franchising, e911, and the hot issue of the season: net neutrality mandates.

"Google, Microsoft Subject to Net Neutrality Complaints"

That is a not unlikely future newspaper headline if the House Telecom and Internet Subcommittee bill were to be enacted into law as proposed. The bill gives the FCC the authority to enforce the FCC's broadband policy statement and the principles incorporated therein. The fourth principle says that "consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, applications and service providers, and content providers."

So far the focus of network neutrality proponents, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo, has been on mandating open access and nondiscrimination for network providers. But, as I pointed out in my House Telecom subcommittee testimony yesterday, the principles clearly would extend the FCC's authority to all the "layers" of the Internet.

Among the oddities of the net neutrality debate is the Democratic House Commerce Committee members' embrace of a "hard" net neutrality mandate. This, of course, is in concert with self-styled left-leaning consumer groups like AARP, so maybe it is not that odd.

What is odd is the effect of the principle on the so-called little guy. It wouldn't be good. Net neutrality would decree that the only legitimate revenue model for broadband is for providers to recover all their costs from end-users. Thus, net neutrality would prohibit the emergence of a two-sided market business model. A two-sided market model would be like the one that supports "free" over-the-air TV with "preferential" payments by advertisers so those advertisers' bits are sent to consumers. A two-sided market also supports "free" search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Consumers don't pay, advertisers do. But under net neutrality applied to the applications or content layers, such a model would be anathema.

Much can, and no doubt will, be said about recent efforts to address "network neutrality" concerns by granting the FCC authority to adjudicate disputes relating to its Policy Statement on this issue. Certainly, these efforts can be seen as an important step forward -- at least compared to proposals that Congress mandate network neutrality immediately and in all circumstances. But there are also clear downsides to this "adjudication authority" approach and, in the final analysis, one wonders whether this kind of legislation would change the FCC's behavior as a practical matter.

In my recent paper on "Fact and Fiction in the Debate over Video Games," I pointed out that one of the reasons that many lawmakers were stepping-up efforts to regulate video games was because of the supposed failure of the industry's voluntary ratings system. In particular, many critics claim that the ratings system is not enforced effectively at the point-of-sale.

As a result, Senators Hillary Clinton, Joseph Lieberman and Even Bayh argue that federal legislation like their proposed "Family Entertainment Protection Act" is needed to "put teeth in the enforcement of video game ratings" because "young people are able to purchase these games with relative ease."

Good news: A new survey out by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today shows that the enforcement system is working better than ever before and that it's not so easy for kids to buy games on their own.

Common Cause has taken out after PFF, among others, for accepting support from, of all things ... corporations! The longer I've been at PFF, the less plussed I am by these periodic attacks on our credibility. But this one is particularly weak in its tendentiousness and selectivity.

The breathless expose purports to shed new light on the "astroturf" campaigns engaged in by communications corporations. For PFF, this heroic Common Cause sleuthing must have taken at least 15 seconds navigating our web site to our supporters page. But the bombshell revelation that we accept corporate donations kind of falls flat because we tend to have supporters on both sides of many issues: net neutrality (Cable/Telephone companies AND Microsoft and Google); franchise reform (Cable AND Telephone Companies); Spectrum Reform (Wireless Cos. for property rights AND Intel and Microsoft for commons); content and liability (Verizon AND the RIAA). This inconvenient fact would ruin a good, straightforward "they are slavish toadies" storyline, so Common Cause chooses to elide that and only point to supporters whose positions they don't like. In other words, the funding issue is only being used by them as a proxy to forward their substantive position in the underlying debate. It is a species of intellectual laziness, at best, or dishonesty, at worst.

Unfortunately, as I predicted would be the case in my National Review editorial earlier this morning, today's hearing on video games in the Senate Judiciary Committee turned out to be quite a one-sided show trial.

Senator Sam Brownback called the hearing to blast the game industry for what he called "graphic," "horrific," and even "barbaric" level of violence we supposedly see in games today. Violent video games, he argued, are becoming "simulators" that train kids to behave violently and even kill cops.

And his proof? As I suspected would be the case (and, again, predicted in my editorial) it largely came down to two key games: "Grand Theft Auto" and "25 to Life." Sen. Brownback decided to show a few clips from these games and one other title ("Postal") to supposedly illustrate just how violent games are today. Now make no doubt about it, these games do contain some truly sickening, despicable acts of simulated violence. I don't know why a game developer feels compelled to show thugs beating prostitutes with a baseball bat, or a criminal shooting cops with a sniper rifle, or someone torching a dead corpse and then urinating on it to put out the fire. It's all very sick and it's quite sad that someone is squandering their creative talents on the depiction of such disgusting, disrespectful acts of violence.

But let's get back to the key point and ask a question that ABSOLUTELY NO ONE EVEN BOTHERED DISCUSSING AT THE HEARING. Namely: Are these games indicative of all video games out there today?

Today's WSJ (subscription required) has this interesting passage in an article on French rioting over a labor law that would permit terminations of employees in their first 2 years of employment:

According to a recent poll, France is the only country among 20 surveyed where those who don't have faith in the free market outnumber those who do. Only 36% of those polled in France agreed with the proposition that the free market is the "best system on which to base the future of the world" -- compared with 71% in the U.S., 66% in Britain and 65% in Germany. In nominally communist China, 74% said they favored the free market, according to the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes.

Is it any wonder that China's best economic days are ahead of it and France's best economic days are behind it?

I've gotten a few e-mails in the past week asking me why I stopped blogging -- and none implying that was a good thing, thank goodness. As my excuse, I accuse ....

Recent reports suggest that "bundling" multiple communications services has not emerged as the "killer app" for attracting or retaining customers. Only a small percentage of subscribers buy bundled services and many of these subs eventually abandon their bundles. Moreover, very few customers have expressed interest in relying on one company to satisfy all of their communications needs, no matter how diverse companies' offerings become. So much for the notion that mergers and the bundling capabilities of the Internet Protocol will transform cable and telephone companies immediately into invincible competitors deserving of regulation.

But the idea that the competitive power of bundles -- if it ever manifests -- may do so only in the future provides another reason why policymakers should be reluctant to regulate service bundles.