Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is urging House Energy and Commerce ranking member Joe Barton (Texas) and other member of her party to reject a net-neutrality bill under development by House Democrats, she said in an interview on Tuesday.

Voters are attuned to the issue, she said, and supporting the bill could have political costs.

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommitee, is concerned that net-neutrality legislation under development by committee Democrats could skip a committee vote and come directly to the floor.

“I am currently reviewing and discussing the proposal provided today on net neutrality.  But, I am not clear on why it may be on the House floor without going through the normal committee process.  This is important legislation and members need ample time, as well as the rest of the Internet industry, to fully understand its implications,” he said on Tuesday.

He did not name a mechanism backers might use to bypass the committee, and House aides did not confirm that Democrats are seeking such a possibillity.

Executives from the United Kingdom's two largest Internet service providers said Tuesday they would give priority to certain websites or applications if companies paid them to do so, according to a report from the British website PC Pro.

Senior executives from BT and TalkTalk said it would be perfectly normal to prioritize web traffic from companies that pay more for the privilege. The executives argued the practice of offering some websites more bandwidth makes sense, even though no companies have approached them to do so as of yet.

The admissions were some of the first from large ISPs that they are ready to ditch the concept of net neutrality, in which all web traffic receives equal priority from ISPs. TalkTalk's Andrew Heaney said net neutrality as it is commonly understood doesn't exist.

"It's a myth we have net neutrality today - we don't," Heaney said. "There are huge levels of discrimination over traffic type. We prioritise voice traffic over our network. We shape peer-to-peer traffic and deprioritise it during the busy hour."

The British telecom regulator Ofcom also indicated some form of paid prioritization would be acceptable, though they cautioned that ISPs would have to be transparency about any such practices.

The House appears poised to pass the Senate's $19 billion reauthorization of NASA on Wednesday, preserving the space shuttle program through next year but giving the White House most of their desired cuts to the human spaceflight program.

If the House approves the bill, which passed the Senate unanimously last month, it would mean an end to most of the Constellation program and increasing reliance on Russia and the commercial space industry to ferry American astronauts to the International Space Station.

The move would also put a temporary stop to a year of wrangling over the agency's future. Lawmakers, particularly those from Florida and Texas with numerous NASA jobs in their districts, have strongly resisted the administration's attempts to privatize human spaceflight. The authorization would lay out a three-year vision for NASA but would still require appropriators to fund the bill's priorities at a later date.

House Science Committee chairman Bart Gordon, (D-Tenn.) said he will support what he considers a flawed Senate bill because there isn't enough time to reach a deal before the start of the new fiscal year on October 1. Gordon offered a compromise of his own last week but that effort stalled after meeting opposition in the upper chamber.

The bill includes $1.6 billion to boost the commercial space industry, $400 million more than in Gordon's bill but still less than half the amount requested by the White House. But the Commercial Spaceflight Foundation said passing the Senate bill would be vastly preferable to continued uncertainy, which may result in layoffs.

AOL agreed to acquire TechCrunch on Tuesday, giving them control of one of the most influential news sites in Silicon Valley.

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington was joined onstage by AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference in San Francisco to sign the acquisition papers. Arrington founded the site in 2005 and watched it grow by leaps and bounds after he was the first to report Google's acquisition of YouTube.

TechCrunch and its associated websites will join AOL's Technology Network but retain their editorial independence, according to a statement from AOL.

“Michael and his colleagues have made the TechCrunch network a byword for breaking tech news and insight into the innovative world of start-ups, and their reputation for top-class journalism precisely matches AOL’s commitment to delivering the expert content critical to this audience,” said Armstrong.

Arrington's comments on the transaction indicate he plans on remaining with the site for the time being. Read more...

Texting bans do not reduce car crashes and may make the problem slightly worse, according to a report from researchers at the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), a group that works on behalf of the auto insurance industry.

Researchers speculated that drivers are lowering their phones so police do not see them texting, and as a result they remove their eyes from the road for longer stretches.

The report examined the frequency of insurance claims filed for vehicle damages related to collisions. It compared this data before and after texting bans took effect in four states. It also looked at the numbers in nearby states.

The findings "are consistent with those of a previous HLDI study, which found that banning hand-held phone use while driving doesn't cut crashes," the group said.

The advocacy group Free Press wrote the Federal Communications Commission on Monday to decry the use of undisclosed commercials on television news programs, a practice they claim is increasingly prevalent.

Free Press policy counsel Corie Wright cited a series of stores by the Los Angeles Times as evidence local TV stations are airing paid advertising under the guise of news in violation of the law. Wright pointed specifically to segments aired on KCBS 2 Los Angeles that were labeled "CBS Healthwatch" but were actually paid advertisements for a local medical center.

"The problem of pay-to-play news is becoming an epidemic on the public airwaves," Wright said. "People rely on the news to make major decisions about their lives – including where to seek medical treatment or how to vote. They deserve to know when a newscast has been influenced by commercial considerations."

House Republicans who support net-neutrality legislation could face political consequences for "regulating the Internet" from Tea Party activists. 

Efforts by the Indian government to expand its access to secure electronic messages may deter companies from doing business there, according to a report from the New York Times.

Indian officials agreed to delay a proposed ban on BlackBerry messaging services last month after reaching an agreement with the device's Canadian maker Research In Motion that would allow Indian security agencies to monitor e-mails sent using the devices.

At the time the Indian government said it would also be seeking the ability to monitor communications sent using Google's Gmail accounts, which now have voice capabilities, and Skype's Internet telephone service. But critics say such monitoring could give Western companies doubts about doing business in India.

“Bans and calls for bans aren’t a solution,” said S. Ramadorai, vice chairman of India’s largest outsourcing company Tata Consultancy Services in a newspaper column published last week. “They’ll disconnect India from the rest of the world.” Read more...