The Senate’s resident hulkster has unleashed a new telecom bill, but evidently Ted Stevens’s proposal doesn’t touch on the net neutrality issue that’s got so many Internet activists and big-name Web companies abuzz.
According to yesterday’s CNET story, if enacted, the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act from Alaska Republican and chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee Ted Stevens could please the recording industry by allowing the FCC to outlaw device makers from enabling recording of digital over-the-air radio.
It could also bolster tax dollars collected for the Universal Service Fund, “a controversy-plagued, multibillion-dollar pool of money that’s currently used to subsidize telecommunications services in rural and other high-cost areas, schools and libraries.”
However, the bill doesn’t do much to help proponents of net neutrality. It would only require that the FCC prepare annual reports on any net neutrality-related problems.