The winds of change are blowing on the Information Super Highway and the driving force behind those winds is money. The history of the Internet is one of “Network Neutrality.”
Network Neutrality — or "Net Neutrality" for short — is the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet.
Put simply, Net Neutrality means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination.
Net Neutrality is the reason why the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech online. It protects the consumer's right to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider. With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data — not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service.
To put it another way:
…the issue called "Net Neutrality," which says that you, the customer, should choose what information you see, which services you use and not the company which owns the telephone or cable network you are using.
With the concept of Network Neutrality holding sway, it doesn’t matter what Net service you use to “log into” the Internet. You will be able to access any web site at the streaming speed of your connection provider. The site you are accessing cannot place speed limits or tariffs based on your Net choices. In other words, Comcast isn’t going to charge you a fee for visiting a site that is housed on their server network just because you use AT&T to connect to the Net. Nor will Comcast make your download or upload speeds slower because you use a competitor as your connection provider. On the flip side, AT&T shouldn’t prevent you from seeing any sites on the Net just because those sites are not affiliated with AT&T. This may soon change, restricting your freedom and the free-flow of information.
The nation's largest telephone and cable companies — including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner — want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won't load at all.
They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data. They want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video — while slowing down or blocking their competitors.
These companies have a new vision for the Internet. Instead of an even playing field, they want to reserve express lanes for their own content and services — or those from big corporations that can afford the steep tolls — and leave the rest of us on a winding dirt road.
The big phone and cable companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to gut Net Neutrality, putting the future of the Internet at risk.
We need to make sure that our voices are heard on this issue. Congress is currently writing the next Telecommunications Act and the giant communications corporations are hard at work lobbying legislatures to sell them (or even give them) the right to carve up sections of the Internet as their own. With that power, they can control form of content, speed of delivery, access to content, and charge for access. When I speak of “charging for access,” I’m not speaking of an individual site charging for its content. That is a practice that is used by many businesses when information is their product. Rather, I’m talking about charging you just for the ability to get to a site’s URL address in the first place!
No matter how you look at this, it is bad for us as “consumers” of the Internet. It is bad for innovation through the free-flow of ideas and information. It is only good for the corporations looking for new, intrusive revenue streams and for corrupt legislators whose pockets are filled with cash at our expense.
What can you do?
As always, contacting your legislators is needed. Two sites allow you to send an e-mail to your legislatures, as well as to members of the FCC, quickly and easily using only a single form. They are MoveOn.org and Working Assets. Another site, SaveTheInternet.com, has an electronic petition that you can sign on its home page that will be presented to Congress. I urge you to fill out each of these forms so that electronic messages from you will reach the appropriate Members of Congress. Should you wish to take the fight farther and either call your legislators or write them via snail mail – either form of communication is taken more seriously by Members of Congress – their contact information can be found here.
Postscript: In spite of this being such a big issue, it has barely registered on the political state. Only John Edwards has taken up the call among the presidential candidates, and Al Gore has focused on it as well.
Postscript 2: Forms such as those I note above generally require a valid e-mail address in order for your messages to be sent. This is to help prevent individuals from “spamming” the sites with message requests. If you are worried about organizations either sending you future e-mails or passing along your information to third parties, most sites allow you to opt-out via checking or unchecking boxes as needed. Finally, you can always set up a “dummy” e-mail account for taking just this sort of action, for entering contests, etc. Google Mail, Yahoo Mail, and Microsoft’s Hotmail are all free, easy to use, and thus are perfect for just this sort of thing. (As an aside, I use Google's Gmail for my everyday e-mail and love it!)
Postscript 3: Thanks to my sister-in-law for the information on the Working Assets site.
1 June 2007
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