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Net Neutrality Bill Spun and Stalled

June 26, 2006 on 3:43 pm | In IdBlog, Spin | Add a Comment

The House voted earlier this month to kill the network neutrality provisions in its telecommunications bill and the Senate Commerce Committee has delayed a vote on its version of the telecommunications overhaul until Tuesday (June 27). This is the most ambitious telecom legislation since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and its passage is not at all certain. The Senate version of the bill, for example, has over 200 amendments covering everything from the taxation of wireless services to cable deregulation.

Senators and Representatives may have been a little surprised by the amount of heat the net neutrality issue has been generating. Both chambers of Congress have seen extensive lobbying from pro and anti-neutrality groups. The pro neutrality lobby is an odd collection of bedfellows. MoveOn.org, the Christian Coalition, Gun Owners of America, Microsoft, Google and a host of others have all signed on to keep the common carriage rules in place — that is to maintain the open-access-for-all model that we have now. The anti-neutrality lobby is comprised primarily of big telcos –- AT&T, BellSouth, Cingular and Verizon –- that want the FCC to allow packet prioritization, which would introduce a new pay-to-play internet.

Presumably, members of Congress are savvy enough to know when they are dealing with lobbyists. The press and the public, however, may not always recognize the source of the information they receive. Little wonder when the Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune run editorials like this. Further muddying the issue are organizations like Hands off the Internet and the Internet Freedom Coalition – both astroturf advocacy groups funded by the telcos. Jeffrey Birnbaum of the Washington Post does a pretty good job of reporting the spin in this article.

For those of us who live and work on the web, this little administrative change could have a major effect. Whether tiered access is a good or bad thing, largely comes down to who you trust. I don’t trust Microsoft, Congress or many members of the press, but I believe that Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf have the best interests of the web at heart. Both have come out strongly in favor of network neutrality. You can read Berners-Lee’s comments on his blog and Cerf’s opinions appear in this bit from the Houston Chronicle.

Pay attention to how your representatives vote on this issue. If you feel they’ve sold out your interests, let them know in this November’s election.