"Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey on Tuesday took to the U.S. House of Representatives floor to introduce a bill called the Network Neutrality Act of 2006 (click here for PDF).
(c/net News.com "Net neutrality proposal revived in House")
His measure is similar to a Senate proposal (see "Senator wants to ban 'fast lane' for Web"), which was introduced in March but has seen no action yet." Unfortunately, the Senate too may balk at legislating net neutrality. ("No love for network neutrality in the Senate" by by Nate Anderson in Ars Technica.)
On April 26, the House of Representatives shot down an ammendment to the telecom bill that would have made it illegal for ISPs to create a multi-tiered Internet (Nate Anderson, Ars Technica, "Net neutrality amendment shot down"). The amendment was rejected 34 to 22, largely along party lines. The Markey amendment was supported by the ACLU (PDF), AARP, religious broadcasters, the Gun Owners of America, and others. The financial services industry appears ready to jump into the battle on the side of net neutrality (Wired News) Broadband providers such as AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon Communications oppose net neutrality because they want to expand from flat pricing to also sell tiers of service based on the speed, reliability and security of the bandwidth used.
I am no expert on this topic, but I know that in a battle between the ACLU and AT&T, my heart lies on the side of the little guy! The inventors of the World Wide Web and the Internet make a strong case for net neutrality!
Here is Tim Berners-Lee's defense of the need for net neutrality.
And here is Vint Cerf's support for net neutrality.
This would be a good time to contact your Congressman and Senators, and urge their support for net neutrality to be ensured by legislation!
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
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2 comments:
This is wonderfully informative. I just read about this issue today at work.
Savetheinternet.com has a petitition:
http://action.freepress.net/campaign/savethenet
I think Net Neutrality should be addressed at the local level as well. I don't know about Rockville but in my town, Red Bank NJ, Verizon just applied for a cable TV franchise. I am pushing my town council members to make Verizon address Net Neutrality as part of the new franchise agreement.
Pushing these issues locally will, at the least, make it seem like there is grass roots support at home when it comes time for congressmen to vote on these issues.
You can see what we are doing locally by visiting my simple blog: http://www.redbanktv.org
Thanks -- Tom
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