Today may be a big day for net neutrality. Today, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act (S.2917), a net neutrality measure introduced to the Senate by Olympia Snowe (R, Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D, North Dakota) will come up for debate.

The measure has received wide support from net neutrality advocates, including major internet service companies such as Amazon.com, Google, and eBay. The act specifically limits the powers of broadband service providers to make "special deals" with content providers and requires them to provide services on an "equivalent" basis.

This bill is far from becoming any kind of law, however, since it is only the most recent in a series of net neutrality bills to be introduced in the House and the Senate. Specifically, it’s the sixth bill introduced to date. Cnet News provides a great data table naming these bills. In fact, it’s not even the only bill being introduced on net neutrality today. The house will also be given it’s first official look at a different bill introduced by Jim Sensenbrenner (R, Wisconsin) and John Conyers (D, Michigan). This bill would render net neutrality enforceable under antitrust law.

The results are a long ways from coming in, but this should be interesting.

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  • net neutrality
  • congress