The Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 (S. 2686) is being digested in Senate Commerce.

Ars technica notes that the current draft includes the Broadcast Flag and rejects requirements of Net Neutrality. It interprets the common principle as:

There's one common thread here: the interests of big business. With the broadcast flag, big business is for heavy regulation. In the case of net neutrality, it's not. At least we know where our lawmakers' true interests lie.

This is an interesting take, since one could say with equal or greater validity that the interests of big business are in favor of Net Neutrality and against the Broadcast Flag.

As some of the commenters note, the pro-NN forces include Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. And the EFF quotes in opposition to the Broadcast Flag the President of the Consumer Electonics Association, which includes Best Buy, Panasonic, LG, Samsung, Sharp, and others of similar heft, who huffs that "We have to stop measuring creativity by the financial interests of ten [content] companies." Ri-ight- everyone knows we should measure it by the short-term financial interests of 100 consumer electronic companies.

The real problem with this write-up, and with most others, is that these issues are hard. A lot of money is sloshing around, but so is a lot of real thought. I am as cynical about Washington as the next guy, but to assume that ideas and honest persuasion do not play a major role is to adopt what the author C.P. Snow called "The cynicism of the unworldly."