Once thought dead, net neutrality roars back to center stage

Conventional wisdom has it that net neutrality is dead. Embalmed. Buried. Covered with six feet of dirt and a mahogany lid. But just in time for All Hallows Eve, the concept has risen from the dead like a zombie and started shambling round the halls of Congress as two senators asked the Senate Commerce Committee to look into the issue of network discrimination this week.

Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) have tag-teamed in the past on the net neutrality issue, and they're still a formidable bipartisan duo. On Friday, the two senators asked the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee to see if a lack of network neutrality rules were causing problems for Americans in the wake of some widely-publicized PR gaffes by some of the country's largest telecommunications firms.