Bare Knuckles For Network Neutrality

11:00 PM Apr 26, 2006

We don't usually do our bloviating about actions-you-need-to-take-right-now. That's the job of people who use our stuff.

Network neutrality is different. This is some serious stuff.

The House Commerce Committee earlier this evening approved a bill that would permit ISPs to play favorites when delivering content -- a practice directly antithetical to the functioning of the Internet. Had this behavior been permitted a decade ago, the "walled garden" online model might have prevailed over the open, fluid and innovative information infrastructure we enjoy today. If this behavior is permitted now, it could do a scorched-earth number on the online world many of us take for granted. Will it hurt you? Only if you're a search engine user, innovator, iPod user, political group, nonprofit, small business, telecommuter, vacationer or blogger. Or, you know, anyone who consumes any sort of web content, from stock tips to dirty pics.

There's more background on this than can possibly be held in this post. If you want some blow-by-blow, MyDD has been all over it; if you want a thumbnail description, this two-minute video clip is great, and good for circulating to casual users.

This is serious for DemocracyInAction because, yeah, we provide a service that depends on the Internet's pipes for delivery, so it's our bottom line. But that's not why anyone reading this should care.

One's experience of the Internet, day by day, is of a bustling and open outdoor space. But the fact is that the space is maintained by a web of state-enforced rules -- and those rules can change. This is a land grab by telecom giants who'd just as soon wall off competition and live the comfortable life of rentiers. Whether that happens depends on which direction the state is persuaded to point its bayonets.

It's getting push-back from e-commerce operators who have their own not inconsiderable political clout, and it's turning into an Internet uproar from every spot on the political spectrum and plenty not noted for their politics, so it can be stopped. Now that it's out of committee, with billions of dollars on the table and every Internet user a potential stakeholder, it's going to turn into one hell of a melee. The telcos fired a warning shot at their commercial opponents in committee today with a nasty little maneuver threatening a federal probe of search engines, a pro-network neutrality constituency.

So, here's the call to action part. We're not leading this parade, but if you're concerned about this issue -- if you'll even go so far as to agree that the Internet ain't much broken now and doesn't need its access rules rewritten without a damn good reason -- the upcoming week or two is time to turn up the heat.

Get on the mailing list at SaveTheInternet.com -- if you're a blogger, sign up in support and show off the banner. If you can get an organization you're involved with to officially join the coalition, so much the better.

Write to your member of Congress, and/or sign MoveOn's petition. Better still, call. A phone call is worth a thousand e-mails, and the din of braying from the moors right from the get-go can cow waffling legislators right into line. The general line for the House of Representatives operator is (202) 224-3121.

Here's our value-added -- we've shoehorned the SaveTheInternet.com talking points into one of our write-to-your-newspaper forms, so if you want to raise a ruckus in the letters to the editor section of your local daily, you can do it here.

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