"END OF THE INTERNET" IS AT HAND: IS IT NEWS YET?

So here's the thing: Nine days ago, a U.S. House subcommittee approved a proposed bill by a bipartisan 21-4 margin, after slapping down a couple of amendments proposed by the committee's minority (Democratic) leadership. The legislation was written by the chairman of the full House committee, who says it will be acted on by that committee as soon as the House returns from its Spring break. It's strongly supported by the nation's single best-funded lobby (big telecom) and now includes major concessions to its main industry opponent (cable TV companies). The powerful chairman, who made all this happen in under three weeks, says the bill will go to a full House vote this summer and will pass.

The legislation in question...

-- ends thirty years of municipal authority over cable TV franchises, eliminating local communities' ability to ensure community-wide service, affect rates or channel availability, negotiate community benefits (like Cleveland's Neighborhood Technology Fund), or maintain robust public access programming

-- permits both new and existing cable/fiber providers, operating under "national franchises", to provide next-generation broadband hookups only where they choose within a community... and even to charge different rates in different neighborhoods

-- permits major owners of Internet backbone like AT&T and Verizon, who will also be dominant local providers of next-generation broadband, to abandon the longstanding principle of network neutrality in Internet service and create "tiers" of cost and access that steer their customers to favored websites. (This is what Jeff Chester and others have been warning is "the end of the Internet as we know it".)

For Cleveland and many nearby communities, the passage of this bill will make upcoming negotiations with Time-Warner on the takeover and renewal of Adelphia Cable's franchises pretty meaningless, since Time-Warner will soon be free to abandon those local franchises in favor of the national alternative.

There's every reason to expect this bill, the "The Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006", to pass the House soon after Chairman Joe Barton steers it through the full Energy and Commerce Committee in early May. There's also good reason to expect a version of national cable/Internet franchising to reach the U.S. Senate floor in the not-too-distant future. If it passes, there will be a conference committee dominated by Barton and his GOP Senate counterpart, they'll produce a "compromise" bill, and national franchising may become the law of the land by the end of the year.

You'd think this would be news, wouldn't you? I would. But apparently we'd be wrong. It can't be real news, because (as far as Google and I can determine) the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act" has not yet been mentioned by:

The Plain Dealer (except in Henry's blog)
The New York Times
The Washington Post
The Associated Press
CBS, NBC, or ABC News
NPR
The vast majority of politics blogs of any stripe, including NEO blogs.

Honorable exceptions to that last generalization include Matt Stoller at MyDD, this Kos diarist, the aforementioned Jeff Chester (who's also been on Amy Goodman), Public Knowledge, Progress Report and a few others -- very few. (Update: Add the Huffington Post to the list.)

The lack of MSM and blogger interest in Northeast Ohio is especially strange, not just because of the impact of this legislation on cities trying to deal with Time-Warner (I promise you, people at City Hall are paying close attention), but also because Ohio's two top-of-the-ticket Democrats, Ted Strickland and Sherrod Brown, are both on Energy and Commerce and will have to vote on this whole mess in the next couple of weeks.