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Unlike a previous open FCC hearing where Comcast helped fill seats in the audience, neither they nor anyone else from the big broadband carriers showed up for the second hearing.

Though the carriers avoided the immediate bad PR that attending the California meeting probably held for them, Comcast and its ilk, like Time Warner and AT&T, now get to see the fallout from declining to attend a net neutrality meeting at Stanford.

Comcast in particular received criticism, thanks to its practice of hindering peer to peer traffic. Their practice of constantly forcing packets to reset, cited as network management by Comcast, brought about a new debate on net neutrality.

Its advocates were up to the challenge. Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, a staunch advocate of net neutrality, wondered why the FCC still hadn't received a clear explanation of the traffic shaping practices by Comcast, as IP Democracy noted:

Lessig got a round of applause for likewise criticizing Comcast's honesty. "The most outrageous thing about this story is that you can't get the facts straight," he said. "If you're going to get this problem solved, the least you can do is get the story straight...It’s really an indictment on the trust for this particular company."

Small wonder that Comcast and others declined to send well-paid public relations pros to the meeting. As GigaOm observed about Lessig's comments, the FCC members probably squirmed in their seats:

The FCC, Lessig said, should pass rules that make it more profitable for service providers to behave than to misbehave. "You have to make it so playing the games is not a good business model for them," Lessig said. "If we really didn’t have a reason to worry that they were playing games [with network management], then what they did inside their networks would be of less concern."

Net neutrality made the Internet a place where lots of game-changing businesses and services could launch and operate. Lessig and other net neutrality advocates fear future innovation would be stifled by the tolls broadband carriers may want to collect for tiered levels of Internet connectivity, above and beyond what they do today.

No one is suggesting a free ride for anyone who wants Internet access. The FCC needs to set the rules, sooner preferably than later, to ensure the next Amazon or Google thrives.