One of the biggest advocates for net neutrality has just woken up to the fact that policing it will mean a bag load of bureaucratic red tape.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said that while he does not want telecommunications giants to steer Internet traffic in a way that would favour some devices or services over others, he also believes that it would be a terrible idea for the government to involve itself as an internet regulator. Schmidt said that it was possible for the government to screw the Internet up, big-time.

The US Federal Communications Commission has decided on rules about how the government will police access to the Internet. However Schmidt, who has been a big fan of the net neutrality suggested by the FCC was less happy about having a regulator on his turf. How he thought that net neutrality was possible without some form of government regulation he did not say.

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