One gets the feeling that if Dallas Mavericks owner and HDNet CEO Mark Cuban wasn't absolutely terrified of broadband video, he wouldn't be constantly ranting about how broadband video is going to fail. Cuban's spent the last five years urging ISPs to block P2P, supporting the cable industry's vision of net neutrality (as in: none), insisting the Internet is dead, lamenting broadband video's shortcomings and generally pouting a lot.

Apparently, Cuban believes that if he scares his readership enough, the inevitable advertising revenue losses cable TV will someday feel from online video won't actually happen. This week on the Mark Cuban show, the vociferous Internet celebrity urges everyone who operates a TV network to support net neutrality. Why the sudden turnaround? Because the Internets will collapse and Internet video will die! Haha:Cuban's responding to new efforts in Congress to impose network neutrality protections. Of course bits don't really "collide" on modern networks, and the bill exempts "reasonable network management" from neutrality provisions allowing for congestion control, but apparently no matter. This is the network neutrality debate, and as we've seen the last two go-rounds, truth, facts, and data are irrelevant -- particularly to overly chatty millionaire TV tycoons worried about their wallets.

While the bill likely won't survive a Congress that's all but directly controlled by telecom lobbyists, that still won't save us from several months of vigorous, fact-optional network neutrality debate. All the usual players are once again gathering, including Mark Cuban and his mouth, paid cable and phone industry sock puppets, stick figure cartoons, dancing men in green tights, and evil ISP flying saucers. Can we just skip to the part where consumer welfare gets ignored and be done with it?