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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.' "

But the bottom line is this: it's AT&T and Comcast vs. Google and Amazon, bandwidth hardware providers vs. bandwidth users, government insiders vs. the sorts of people who started their businesses in basements. The "Hands Off" group believes that the sky is falling, that the internet is doomed, unless someone (read: Google, Amazon, Yahoo! and eBay) is willing to pay for more and better equipment. The "Save" group insists that most of the bandwidth lays fallow (Newmark quotes Fiber Optic Association president Jim Hayes, who said "93% of all the fiber that's been installed is still unused"), and that those who built the bandwidth, are just being greedy.

Although McCurry and team seem better positioned to win the debate on Capitol Hill, Newmark et. al. have a lot more [profits] to lose. If the cable operators are allowed to pit the content providers against one another, their investors will stand to win big.