CNet News.com has an interesting article on what the Democrats win in the US midterm elections means for internet neutrality and technologu-related legislation:
By an 11-11 tie, a GOP-dominated committee failed in June to approve rules requiring that all Internet traffic be treated the same no matter what its "source" or "destination" might be. A similar measure also failed in the House of Representatives.
But now that this week's elections have switched control of the House back to the Democrats--and they appear to have seized the Senate as well--the outlook for technology-related legislation has changed dramatically overnight.
On a wealth of topics--Net neutrality, digital copyright, merger approval, data retention, Internet censorship--a Capitol Hill controlled by Democrats should yield a shift in priorities on technology-related legislation.
Network neutrality is one of the clearest examples of a partisan rift. In the Senate, all the Republican committee members but one voted against extensive broadband regulations. These regulations are backed by Internet companies such as Google and eBay, but are opposed by telecommunications and hardware providers.
"Clearly, we're going to have to address the question of network neutrality," Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, told reporters on Wednesday. Dingell, who has served in the House for more than 50 of his 80 years, is set to be the next chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which writes telecommunications laws.
Read the rest of the article here.
