FCC chairman Julius Genachowski spoke out in favor of net neutrality this week in a speech at the Brookings Institute, and President Obama also mentioned net neutrality in a speech he gave.

The FCC chairman’s speech must have made Time Warner very unhappy:

Today, I propose that the FCC adopt the existing principles as Commission rules, along with two additional principles that reflect the evolution of the Internet and that are essential to ensuring its continued openness.

The fifth principle is one of non-discrimination — stating that broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications.

This means they cannot block or degrade lawful traffic over their networks, or pick winners by favoring some content or applications over others in the connection to subscribers’ homes. Nor can they disfavor an Internet service just because it competes with a similar service offered by that broadband provider.

This would seem to rule out Time Warner’s from offering their own streaming video for free, while charging per-GB usage fees for anyone choosing to download video from other sources. It also suggests that the FCC will not be happy if Time Warner try to throttle internet TV because it competes with their cable offerings.

Of course, it didn’t take long for various paid representatives of the cable TV companies to react. Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison went so far as to introduce legislation attempting to stop the FCC from spending any money enforcing any kind of net neutrality at all. Given that I didn’t even get a reply to my letter to her in April, I wasn’t surprised. I’m sure that generous campaign contributions from AT&T and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association had nothing to do with her stance on this issue.