Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took a historic step towards developing new rules to safeguard the free and open nature of the Internet, fulfilling a key campaign promise of President Obama's and kicking off a process that has been years in the making.
If adopted, the Commission's net neutrality protections will ensure that users have unfettered access to all lawful online content and applications. These measures, which will be crafted over the coming months by the FCC, are urgently needed to preserve the openness and competition that have made the Internet the most successful communications medium in human history.
Since its earliest days, the Internet has been guided by the principles of non-discrimination and freedom. That means that all ones and zeros are treated equally and special interests and Corporate America can't direct Internet traffic to serve their own purposes at the expense of the public.
From the very beginning of the Internet, this electronic equality has enabled users to innovate, to get their voices heard, to launch new services and business enterprises, and to participate in cultural communications across the planet. Whether you're in the Fortune 500 or the freshman class at the University of Massachusetts, the Internet treats your online activities in the same manner. Whether you're trading stocks or selling socks, the true genius of the Internet is that you never have to ask permission to innovate.
That has always been the genius of the Internet's architecture. But that genius is now under attack - threatened by the prospect that corporations will seek to erect roadblocks on the information superhighway, charging telecommunications tolls every time you visit your favorite website or blog or even watch a video clip. Some corporations are now seeking to provide fast Internet speeds only to those who can afford to pay. Such a two-tiered system would be a radical, wrong-headed departure from the Internet's historic rules of the road and a new financial burden on consumers.
As the Internet continues to evolve, we are now faced with a choice. Can we preserve this wildly successful medium and the freedom it embodies, or do we permit a few large corporations to fundamentally alter how the Internet has historically functioned? Do we retain a level playing field or do we allow the imposition of new fees and the artificial creation of slow lanes and fast lanes for content providers on the Internet?
I strongly believe that we must enshrine basic principles of openness and fairness into the rules governing how Internet service providers operate - giving the FCC the authority to be the proverbial cop on the cyber beat, to ensuring that these principles of freedom and competition are upheld in the marketplace. In this way we can preserve the best of what the Internet is even as it continues to evolve.
The FCC has taken an historic step. Still, we should also ensure that future administrations do not cast aside net neutrality rules. To prevent this from happening, I believe it would be useful to incorporate these principles into law. That's why in July, I introduced H.R. 3458, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, along with my colleague in the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA). Our bill, which is also cosponsored by House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA):
• Stipulates that unfettered access to the Internet to offer, access, and utilize content, services, and applications is vital for consumers and our economy;
The FCC is now in the early stages of developing the rules of the road for the Internet, and our bill, which directs the FCC to undertake such a rulemaking process to preserve the Internet's openness for all users, is a complement to the FCC's efforts. Now more than ever, as this historic process unfolds and the legislation advances, the voice of the online community - from bloggers to gamers, from artists to small business entrepreneurs, from software engineers to those folks who just sent their first email - now is the time to rise up to defend internet freedom. Anyone reading the words on this blog has a vital role to play - get your voice heard, register your opinion, express your viewpoint. The future of the Internet may depend upon it.
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Art Brodsky: Those Who Hate The Fairness Doctrine Should Love Net Neutrality
If conservatives truly understood the Fairness Doctrine, then they wouldn't go around using it as a justification for opposing Net Neutrality.
Without regulation, the provider, could sensor your posts.
Get it?
Furthermore, the internet is a set of rules for interacting with other sites.
You think it's not regulated now?
Who is in charge of internet addresses allocation?
Why don't you look it up.
Without regulation the internet would turn to cheating and chaos.
Next we should put binding price restrictions on the cost of pharmaceutical drugs developed from discoveries funded by public money. And next we should go on to require the telecommunications industry to honor its contractual obligations to provide the public with some use of its own airwaves. That would not only be a refreshing change, but it would reduce the cost of running for office enough to level the playing field for candidates with broad appeal - and less (corporate) money. It makes sense to begin with the Internet, an issue that's so obvious that even the telecommunications industry is finding it challenging to dream up a convincing astro-turf campaign of deception.
Finally then let's take this victory and move forward into all the other areas in which corporations have stolen from the public domain and continue to offload legimate costs of production back into the public domain. I don't know about you guys, but I've had enough. And if the Chamber of Commerce wants to be the enemy of the public - Bring Em On. Boycotts are an extremely effective means of aquiring the attention of those for whom money is the only visible value.
Hands off boys.
The Internet is the result of governmnet created rules.
The internet was created in governmnet offices, with faceless bureaucrats, who happen to be brilliant scientists and engineers.
You really don';t know what the world is about, do you?
Which is the lesser of two evils, and why does it seem that's the only choice? We're a big world and the internet is ours. Why are we going to let someone take it over? Someone needs to think outside the box here and come up with a better alternative.
I don't have any problem with regulating pricing on the internet, but lets understand net neutrality for what it is - price regulations intended to benefit one segment of users - primarily advertisers and marketing folks.
Don't be naive about what you are signing up to support - this is a free market with a government regulation to control pricing for the benefit of advertisers.
If you want a system that ultimately works then the intent should be to create a level playing field, not create advantages for one group over others. Personally, I have no problem with the internet providers limiting usage through pricing for those who drive large volumes of data, thus limiting my ability to use the internet without their interference.
Understand what you are doing before you jump into the fire!
I for one, don't wish to see web sites, services, and bandwidth doled out in chunks like cable packages, and without neutrality, this is a likely end-game for a lot of users.
Do some real research, you might find you have misunderstood this argument from the start.
Providers have ALREADY slowed and disrupted shows and articles they didn't like.
What if you could never get a clean phone line to certain people, the phone company didn't like?
Yeah, the US has a plutocracy, so at the moment the difference between the government and the corporations is less than it should be.
But why do you believe Corporatism, the .1% ruling the rest is better than Democracy?
Ciscoguy does not understand that all providers, sensing a profit center, will jump on the blocking content bandwagon.
We have some pretty smart people in the world, and the internet is world-wide, so I suggest we get some of those smart people together and come up with a consumer-friendly plan.
We do not have to take the option of Corporation or Big Brother.
To settle for regulation and congressional act is to say the government has a right to sign away our access and regulate it. I disagree they should not have that right nor should corporations. And we have a vehicle to protect it that is iron clad.
Now while we remember it's golden hayday of freedom is the time or it will be chipped away piece by piece.
There are many, MANY good reasons to support net neutrality. It is not however the "one sided, evil corporations only oppose it" rule that so many on this website believe it to be.
For those people posting on this topic that don't actually know anything about the telecom industry, the issue here is bandwidth control. Back in the late 90's, the market place dictated a specific type of internet access . . . you pay for how fast the content is downloaded to you, not the TOTAL amount of content available. The "total" amount was unlimitted. I love the neophytes on this thread claiming that without this bill the internets will begin to be "closed off", like Prodigy or AOL of ten years ago, while ignoring the fact that most of these telecoms got rich because the market place demanded an open access feature.
Getting back to bandwidth control, lets take AT&T and the iPhone as the prime example here. On AT&T's network, you cannot access Hulu.com or Skype. Why? They don't have the bandwidth for it; its that simple. It isn't an issue of "controlling where the consumer goes", its an issue of allowing everyone to have the same relative "speed" when accessing their network. With the net neutrality rules in place (and therefore allowing access to Hulu and Skype, along with the ability to download bittorrents), the millions of people around the country that enjoy the iPhone will suddenly awake one day to 14.4 Kbps modem speed.