Representatives Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat, reheated the network neutrality debate last Friday by (re)introducing the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. This is actually the third time Markey has attempted to push network neutrality protection into law; we discussed the last effort in February of 2008.

Markey's latest bill would once again make it illegal for a broadband ISP to "block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade the ability of any person to use an Internet access service to access, use, send, post, receive, or offer any lawful content, application, or service through the Internet."

As with previous incarnations, this latest bill does allow for "reasonable network management" practices by ISPs, but leaves it up to the freshly stocked FCC to define what exactly that means. The law would allow any ISP customer to file a complaint with the FCC on a neutrality violation, and receive a ruling within 90 days on the claim's legitimacy. If a claim is found to be legitimate, the ISP will be forced to pay damages to the impacted party.

That's a mountain of work for the FCC, given the high number of false positives on the net neutrality front. As with the last two times Markey has attempted to get neutrality legislation passed, ISPs are venomously opposed to the idea while consumer advocates are singing the bill's praises. Free Press director Timothy Karr seems to think the third time's the charm for Markey's legislation, calling it "the First Amendment of the Internet age."

But there's a reason this is the third effort by Markey, and it's the bottomless lobbying budgets of the nation's largest carriers. However well intentioned Markey's effort may be, it's incredibly unlikely that this bill gains any traction among incredibly well-lobbied lawmakers, even with a Democratic Congress, FCC and President. Still, Free Press is trying to rally consumers to contact their representatives to support the bill.