Gutting Net neutrality
p2p news / p2pnet: It’s You versus Them in North America, ‘them’ being vested corporate interests, and ‘you’ being the people.
Whis why SavetheInternet.com has been formed.
Dubbed the First Amendment of the Internet, Net neutrality, "ensures that the public can view the smallest blog just as easily as the largest corporate Web site by preventing Internet companies like AT&T from rigging the playing field for only the highest-paying sites," says SavetheInternet.com.
"But Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are spending millions of dollars lobbying Congress to gut Net Neutrality.
"There’s currently no law on the books protecting net neutrality. If Congress doesn’t take action now, the future of the Internet is at risk."
Charter members range across the political spectrum and include professor Larry Lessig, Free Press, Gun Owners of America, right-of-center Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds, MoveOn.org Civic Action, Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America, Public Knowledge, Common Cause, the American Library Association and US PIRG.
"On one side you have the public…on the other side you have the nation’s largest telephone and cable companies, who have aligned with some in Congress to strip the Internet of the First Amendment," says said Tim Karr, campaign director for Free Press.
For anyone who thinks the threat is hypothetical, SavetheInternet.com lists four examples of what’s already happening.
- In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.
- In 2005, Canada’s telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a labor dispute.
- Shaw, a big Canadian cable TV company, is charging an extra $10 a month to subscribers who want to use a competing Internet telephone service.
- In April, Time Warner’s AOL blocked all emails that mentioned www.dearaol.com — an advocacy campaign opposing the company’s pay-to-send e-mail scheme.
Politicians are trading favors for campaign donations from companies that want to abolish Net neutrality, says SavetheInternet.com. "They’re being wooed by people like AT&T’s CEO, who says ‘the Internet can’t be free’."
Among other ways of making your views count, "tell your elected representatives to protect Internet freedom now," says the site, the means being an automatic petition.
"When you fill out the information and push submit, we will automatically send it to your Members of Congress."
Stay tuned.
April 25th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
Major ISPs rigging the playing field for only the highest-paying and “government approved” sites.
This is exactly what the current administration WANTS. If their corporate media buddies usurp control of the net then the guv has whatever strings it needs available to pull at any point. There will be no stopping this. Short of incumbent lawmakers loosing elections over it (which AIN’T gonna happen…) this thing is a done deal. It’s just a matter of time. Other nets may spring up to soften the blow, but the “net as we know it” is DOOMED. Public opinion? US lawmakers standing up for the public good? Right….
Sorry to be negative about it, but that’s the way I see it.
April 25th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
yeah BUT if it happens, it makes the internet (as provided by a non-neutral ISP) useless to me… therefore I drop my account and tell the ISP to go screw themselves and why I fired them.
April 26th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
This is just crazy to me, but as I look at it from the ISPs, what a perfect scheme. I know they (the ISPs) must be hurting, with US internet ussage the highest its ever been, with more homes having access to broadband and highspeed internet, and the cost for such services around $50 a month, it must be hard for the ISPs to turn a profit. As a consumer, the way I look at is they are providing me a transport medium, the actual physical layer of the OSI model, thats all I want. Now if I choose to use that medium to access the web, email, ftp, telnet, p2p, newsgroups, streaming audio, streaming video, VOIP, or whatever service I wish to access or host, should not be controlled by the ISPs. I dont pay them to be the Nanny, to censor what information I request, nor do I have any intention to pay them more to access certain sites. This could be a blow, but I have faith that if it were to occur, the computer elite will create and publish new software for workarounds or even entire new services (examples are p2p networks) that will be able to circumvent this, rendering the ISPs efforts useless and non-cost productive. Hopefully, it will never come to that.