This weekend, a new lobbying effort started to preserve the public internet (in the public interest): Save the Internet. Members of the coalition behind Save the Internet include Free Press, MoveOn.org, Consumers Union, American Library Association, Common Cause, Center for Digital Democracy, Public Knowledge, Association of Research Libraries, Craig Newmark (Craigslist) and law professors Lawrence Lessig (Stanford), Tim Wu (Columbia), Susan Crawford (Cardozo) and Glenn Reynolds (Tennessee).
Some reactions:
Art Brodsky, TPM Cafe: Congress Is Giving Away the Internet, and You Won’t Like Who Gets It: “Don’t look now, but the House Commerce Committee next Wednesday is likely to vote to turn control of the Internet over to AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and what’s left of the telecommunications industry. It will be one of those stories the MSM writes about as “little noticed” because they haven’t covered it.”
David Weinberger, Joho the Blog: Why Net neutrality matters: “Net neutrality (formerly known as the end-to-end principle) means that the people who provide connections to the Internet don’t get to favor some bits over others. This principle is not only under attack, it’s about to be regulated out of existence. Here’s why it matters…”
Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine: Save the Internet, Indeed: “The age of business models built on scarcity and on keeping your customers from doing what they want to do is over. Now we just have to make sure that Congress doesn’t try to keep it on artificial life support.”
Michael Froomkin, Discourse.net: On ‘Saving the Internet’: “Regulating ISPs as to how they prioritize and deliver content is I think deeply second-best to true competition in the broadband services market for all sorts of reasons.”
Elsewhere, Jeff Pulver is hosting a contest for Save the Net Viral Video. In a video, Alex Curtis explains Net Neutrality
Some more thoughts on net neutrality
We would not need new legislation to protect the free internet if there was meaningful competition in the broadband access market. In the absence of that competition, the monopoly power wielded by the rapidly consolidating major telephone and cable providers could extort “protection money” in addition to the charge for bandwidth from business that rely on the internet. Regulation can prevent broadband access providers from exercising their monopoly power to harm the public interest.
Because of the lack of meaningful competition in broadband here in the US, we are falling further and further behind the leading countries in the quantity and quality of our information infrastructure. From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2005: Down to the Wire
In the first three years of the Bush administration, the United States dropped from 4th to 13th place in global rankings of broadband Internet usage. Today, most U.S. homes can access only “basic” broadband, among the slowest, most expensive, and least reliable in the developed world, and the United States has fallen even further behind in mobile-phone-based Internet access. The lag is arguably the result of the Bush administration’s failure to make a priority of developing these networks. In fact, the United States is the only industrialized state without an explicit national policy for promoting broadband.
More than enforcing network neutrality, the US needs a real broadband policy. that will encourage– rather than forbid– projects like community and municipal wireless networks, promote competition for broadband and mobile access, and make it possible for businesses, individuals, and the federal, state and local governments to take better advantage of the information age.
Previously: Three Things About Network Neutrality (Apr. 17, 2006)
The Broadest of the Bands (Aug. 26, 2005)
State support for information access (feb. 25, 2005)
Net Neutrality Reading List (Feb. 28, 2006)
Brand X (Jun. 27, 2005)
