For everyone keeping up with Net Neutrality, on June 8, the House defeated the Network Neutrality Act of 2006. A similar bill, Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2006, isn’t having much luck in the Senate.

There are all kinds of issues at play here. Proponents for net neutrality think safeguards need to be put in place to ensure the Internet never becomes a tiered service - namely that bigwigs like Google and Amazon would have to pay more to telecoms for using more bandwidth.

“The Internet should be governed by equal access and non-discrimination,” said Christopher Putala, executive vice president of public policy at EarthLink Inc. Added Jeff Kuhns, who directs technology services at Penn State University: “Network operators should not be able to give preferences to their services over others.”

Without such protection, they argue, carriers like AT&T Inc. or Comcast Corp. could become gatekeepers of the Internet, dictating which sites consumers can access and at what speeds. Such a dramatic break with how the Internet has worked in the past could stifle innovation and competition and hurt the U.S. economy, they say.

The telecom providers seem to have the Senate convinced that this is a non-issue.

“These companies are demanding regulation based on hypotheticals,” said David L. Cohen, a senior Comcast executive. He and other executives of big phone and cable companies say further regulation could retard investment in network upgrades and limit Internet-access speeds.

Then there are the federal regulators, who already claim to have the power to investigate complaints on a case-by-case basis. William Kovacic, head of the Federal Trade Commission, told Senators in a hearing last Wednesday that the FTC already has the authority to go after those that try to implement a tiered approach. So, with no actual evidence that net neutrality is an issue, the Senate is content to take a wait-and-see approach.

According to a recent Knowledge at Wharton article, while there’s a wide range of opinions on net neutrality, most experts believe that passing legislation would only hinder things - meaning that in all likelihood, Congress would get it wrong.

Wharton professor Kevin Werbach support net neutrality but think Congress could easily craft legislation that might hinder the Internet’s development. Says Werbach

“There are really two issues in the network neutrality debate: Should government step in when broadband network owners discriminate against unaffiliated content and services, and should there be a prospective rule mandating non-discrimination? I’m very troubled by the possibility that network operators will act in anticompetitive ways against application and content providers, but I find it hard to craft a workable legal rule prohibiting such actions.”

Of course, there’s also the issue of marketability - how could telecoms keep their customers if they blocked Google and Yahoo? That seems like a strategy for mass customer exodus.

Joe Crea, writing for Legal Times, likens the struggle to a matter of lobbying. Telecoms have been lobbying in Washington for ages while this is all new to the tech community, who have been relying on grass-roots efforts to make their point.

But their anemic D.C. presence has been no match for the long-standing telecom industry, a giant in Washington’s circles that has pounded Capitol Hill and the public with an advertisement blitzkrieg courtesy of the United States Telecom Association, the industry’s chief trade group, urging Congress not to regulate the Internet.

Though the techies have managed to throw some wrenches into the debate, they’ve arrived late to the game and haven’t been able to strategize well beyond their baseline grass-roots support. Their tardiness may seem surprising, since at stake, many techies argue, is the very existence of the Internet.

“We really believe that the future of the Internet hangs on the congressional decision on net neutrality. … It’s the number-one priority,” says Ben Scott, policy director for Free Press, a consumer advocate organization in Washington that has partnered with two unlikely bedfellows — the reliably conservative Christian Coalition of America and the liberal MoveOn.org Civic Action — for a “Save the Internet” campaign.

So, right now, it looks like the debate is dead in Congress but I won’t be surprised if this becomes an annual debate that grows as the internet evolves.