Ted Stevens, the Republican Senator from Alaska who has held office for a record 40 years, has been indicted on seven counts of making false statements in connection with illegal influence peddling by the likes of convicted Veco CEO Bill Allen — who says the company dispatched employees to remodel Senator Stevens's Alaskan home and paid former Alaskan State Senator Ben Stevens, Ted Stevens's son, $234,000 in bribes. However, none of the indictments arises from his much-parodied description of Internet infrastructure as a "series of tubes."His strong opinions in the network neutrality debate may have something do with contributions from Internet service providers like Verizon and AT&T, which are respectively third and fifth on the list of largest contributors to his current re-election campaign, both ahead of oil industry services company Veco. He also counts News Corp. and Disney as top donors, and has championed broadcast flag provisions that would have required electronics manufacturers to bar users from recording digital audio or video flagged by rightsholders. The investigation by the Department of Justice has been going on for four years, having raided the senator's remodeled home last year. But it's clear that corporations have known that Senator Stevens's vote has been for sale for some time now. The bad news alone might spell doom for the senator's re-election campaign, which would count as good news for open Internet advocates — the Democratic challenger, Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, is a strong supporter of network neutrality legislation.