The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation

Knows nothing about Commerce, Science or Transportation.

Ted Stevens showed today how the misperceptions of the structure of the Internet by their PR firms and lobbyists worked their way into the less astute, yet powerful, thinkers in Washington, DC.  Mr. Steven said that the Internet was a "series of tubes".  It is easy to see how this was a concept Mr. Steven could grasp - as most of what he knows are pipelines.  Pipelines carry one thing at a time.  So, this was an analogy he could grasp quickly and run with.

The only problem was, it was totally wrong.

As was the popular notion that the net neutrality debate was started by people wanting net neutrality.  The debate was started by telcos pushing legislation through congress (many informed as well as Ted Stevens) that would allow them to change how they controlled the US portion of the Internet.  Net Neutrality was little more than a rider on an currently debated piece of legislation and that rider said "Don't ruin the Internet."

Sigh.

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