Steve Pagliuca tackles net neutrality.

For anyone that thinks serving in Congress or the U.S. Senate means only dealing with great philosophical issues like the role of the government in health care, education, the economy, or international affairs...please allow me to present the issue of net neutrality.

Basically, there is a group of people (i.e. telecom executives) that think they should have the right to sell access to the internet through their infrastructure systems.  For instance, if I wanted people to have easy access to kennedyseat.com, I should have to pay Comcast a fee for anyone that uses Comcast broadband to get to my site.  There is, understandably, a great deal of concern from folks who think this would severely limit the ability of smaller sites to compete with larger sites.

I'm not sure I am explaining this very well, so try this example.  Two sites exist: kennedyseat.com and boston.com.  We each have to pay Comcast for traffic to our sites.  Who do you think will pay Comcast more, thus ensuring faster and more reliable visits for their readers? (If that still doesn't make sense, feel free to bore yourself with the wikipedia entry.

My point is that this issue is complex and mind numbingly boring - but it's incredibly important to the future of the internet in the U.S.  It's also an example of the countless tedious issues that Senators and members of Congress have to deal with (Ed Markey has established himself as one of the experts on net neutrality).

Earlier today, Steve Pagliuca weighed in on this critical issue - laying out his plan for protecting net neutrality.

The basic tenants:

1) Establish a national policy to protect a free and open internet. 

• Supports Markey's Internet Freedom Preservation Act.

2) Support FCC's principles for Net Neutrality and proposed rules for prohibiting limited network management practices

3) Make the rules apply to wireless networks

• Thinks rules can be modified to account for technological challenges and ensure net neutrality principles apply to wireless networks.

Throughout this election I think I have been pretty good about not taking a position on any issue, but as the proprietor of a fledgling website I am obviously 100% in support of net neutrality.  I applaud Pags for taking it up.

The only problem is, nobody else cares (well, no voters at least, unless they also run websites).  As you can see on his website, Pags invited anyone to join a Facebook discussion of the issue.  So how many people joined?  Well, one guy joined to talk about veterans issues and something about connecting released prisoners with church groups, but I'm couldn't quite grasp his position on net neutrality.