As we wrote about earlier, the FCC is hosting a hearing on network management at Stanford Law School this afternoon. After a brief break to listen in to the Google earning's call, I jumped back on the webcast to catch the tail end of the first panel on network management and consumer expectations, where the commissioners grilled more than a half dozen experts.

Below are some highlights from the rather spirited debate:

FCC CHAIRMAN KEVIN MARTIN: How should we be looking at network management practices, with reports of consumers being cut off, calls for different tiers of service, etc?

Larry Lessig, IP expert and Stanford Law professor:

"It's going to be extraordinarily difficult."

He proposes getting to a point when current network management practices are "not a good business model" for ISPs.

Tiered service "is inevitable right now and I would not oppose it."

"The most amazing thing about this story is that you can't get the facts straight." The FCC is a government agency, and Comcast "is consistently misrepresenting to you what is happening here. It is rocket science, but it's not" something that very capable experts cannot explain.

This is "really an indictment on the trust of this particular company. The most important thing is to address the question of truthfulness."

He acknowledged that perhaps Comcast is such a big company that the various departments are not communicating, and stopped short of accusing the company of fraud, but "you would eliminate confusion if you had serious penalties."

REPUBLICAN COMMISSIONER DEBORAH TATE: She suggests that much of the content on file-sharing sites is illegal, and the FCC's "principles only apply to lawful content."

Robb Topolski, software quality engineer: It was P2P that started the Internet ... we can't punish a protocol in the name of defending copyright or to prevent exploitation. It's not the right approach.

Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriter's Guild of America: Topolski's view is the "guns don't kill people, people kill people argument."

REPUBLICAN COMMISSIONER ROBERT MCDOWELL: He brings up blog rumors that some panelists were paid by or work for network operators. Everyone denies this and said they attended the hearing on their own dime. He then asks a few panelists to describe exactly what Comcast is doing wrong, and how they came to that conclusion.

Topolski: When you go to a gas station and you pull out the pump ... you decide regular unleaded every time because that's what you've always decided before. There's an octane listed there ... and you expect that when the pump registers ... that you actually receive [what's on the pump]. If dealers and suppliers decided that they were going to change the formula on their own ... but they weren't going to disclose it to you, it would be very hard for you to keep your car in shape. Before you knew what was wrong, your car would be in bad shape. Comcast ...changed the formula of the Internet and they didn't tell anyone. Users ... were unable to do so at the prices they paid.

COMMISSIONER MCDOWELL: How do you know that?

Topolski: In March 2007, I started to investigate why I couldn't upload anything [with Gnutella] while I could do it with eDonkey. It was more of an intellectual thing for me. Why does this work here and not there? What I found was that Comcast was ... really hammering Gnutella [but not eDonkey]. I used [a] packet sniffer [that] reports on the screen the data that's passing in each direction, including headers and the content so that I can make an analysis whether the conversation that's going on is [correct].

I tied this to a particular company [called] Sandvine. The way I did that ... after I collected that data, I went on the Web to see who does that. First I found great firewall of China stuff ... and I found this one company called Sandvine. I then uncovered a patent that describes this ... process of sending a re-set package in both directions ... that's how I tied the rest of the story together.

George Ou, Independent Consultant and Former Network Engineer: Comcast is trying to manage its network so bandwidth hogs don't take too much of their share. Groups like Free Press suggested that we go to metered Internet access [Ed's Note: Free Press e-mailed to deny that they support metering]. Here we have Lessig espousing the virtues of metered internet access and [Topolski] saying no, we don't. [Comcast's network management] is better than the alternative of metered Intenret access

Lessig: I speak for nobody ... I don't speak for Free Press or the Electronic Frontier Foundation. What I said about metering [is that] I didn't think that was inconsistent with Net neutrality. That's very different from saying I want a world of metered Internet. I would prefer a world where I pay one price and get whatever I want. One important point the FCC should focus on is, during days when FCC was adopting policies that led to significant reduction in competition [among] ISPs, one of the thing you didn't think about enough was how hard your world will be when we come down to 1 or 2 ISPs. [I wouldn't have to file petitions with the FCC if there was ample competition and I could just switch providers when problems arose].