It's a classic geek insult: A Google executive has called the Wall Street Journal "confused" about its stance on whether companies should be able to buy themselves a fast lane on the Internet.

On Friday, the five commissioners of the FCC are set to vote on whether Comcast should be punished for interfering with traffic over its network. Comcast won't have to worry about fines — at worst, the Internet service provider will only have to agree to stop the specific practice of blocking peer-to-peer BitTorrent traffic and disclosing to customers what network management it practices, which the the company already does. So why should you care?What's important is that if the vote passes, it will set a precedent that strengthens the FCC's claim on jurisdiction over regulating the Internet by giving some teeth to the agency's Internet Policy Statement from 2005. Republican chairman Kevin Martin can count on majority, thanks to the support of the two Democrats on the commission, and the motion is expected to pass. But not unanimously, as Republican commissioner Robert McDowell doesn't approve. He penned a dissenting opinion piece in the Washington Post arguing for the preservation of the laissez faire status quo for ISPs: "If we choose regulation over collaboration, we will be setting a precedent by thrusting politicians and bureaucrats into engineering decisions." (Photo by AP/Stephan Savoia)

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.

Comcast could be subject to an "enforcement action" if the regulators at the FCC vote on August 1st to approve chairman Kevin Martin's proposed punishment for improper network management policies by the Internet service provider. Meanwhile, the boastful buccaneers at The Pirate Bay want to develop universal network traffic encryption meant to make the entire Internet a samizdat free from government and telco prying eyes. [AP] (Photo by AP/Jeff Roberson)

Cable copmany Comcast assured the FCC that the company's "network management" practices that involved blocking file-sharing traffic only affected heavy users during peak hours. However, tests found that the Internet service provider blocks such traffic for a majority of users all day, every day, as does fellow ISP Cox. [Torrentfreak]

According to Australian tech trade Communications Day, Google may be planning to fund a new trans-Pacific fiber-optic cable, part of its growing in-house telecom network. (A Google rep neither confirmed nor denied the plans.) Why would Google want to lay cable on the ocean floor? Google already owns a considerable fiber network, used for in-house needs at present. But its telecom activities, which now include bidding on wireless spectrum in the United States, arouse suspicions that it might be getting into the phone business. Nonsense.