Mike McCurry vs. Craig Newmark: is the internet doomed?

The Net Neutrality debate is taking on a fever pitch as Congress considers legislation that would, in essence, allow AT&T, Comcast and other phone and cable operators to charge for "premium" service, including data-heavy VoIP and video. Google, Amazon and other providers of data want to keep the content delivery the same for all -- and prevent operators from charging for preferred placement.

At its heart, the legislation would allow content machines to bid for priority delivery. In Craig Newmark's words, "[should] Yahoo ... be allowed to outbid Google to slow down Google on people's computers?" The group he supports, "Save the Internet," says no. Mike McCurry, former White House spokesman and co-chair of the very confusingly-named "Hands Off the Internet" group, say yes. He echoes Chicken Little as he tells Newmark in a Wall Street Journal debate, "the current Internet is creaky and will suffer congestion if we don't invest in improvements. The network operators prepared to make those investments need to get a return and one way is to charge a premium for managing huge bandwidth content differently."

It's a very confusing argument, as they seem to be both arguing for less government involvement and at one point Newmark commends McCurry for "cleverly using Colbertian 'truthiness.' "