Can a groundswell of popular support for network neutrality save free speech online? Radio show “Media Minutes” asks whether the SavetheInternet coalition has the momentum to turn public opinion against AT&T and their coin-operated front men in Washington.

Listen to the show.

Gun Owners of America’s Craig Fields puts it best:

“In a very, very strange situation, what we have is the necessity of government intervention to ensure a free marketplace of ideas. Whenever you see people from the far left and the far right joining together about something that Congress is getting ready to do, it’s been my experience that what Congress is getting ready to do is basically un-American.”

Columbia Professor Timothy Wu gives an historical perspective by comparing AT&T’s net control scheme to the AP’s 19th century news monopoly, calling it “a threat not only to American business and competition but a threat to American democracy.”

The loss of network neutrality will smother the innovative nature of the Internet, which has made it such a powerful economic and social engine. Warns Professor Wu:

“It’s no longer survival of the fittest. It’s no longer who has the best technology. It’s a question of who goes golfing with the CEO of AT&T. And I think that’s not the American way.”

Indeed, which helps explain the left-right cyberstorm over this issue. Listen in.

Right Wing Nut House is blogging about net neutrality, as are dedicated conservatives Kitty Litter, the Absurd Report, and Freedom Watch. And SavetheInternet was the Web Site of the Day on Right Wing News.

I’ve been adding supporting blogs to our blogroll furiously, as you can see on the right. Filmmaker magazine, DeafDC, the Asian-Pacific Islander Blog Network and Business Analysis Insight are some of the new sites on there. And we’re up to 1300 friends on MySpace.

Meanwhile, Robert Bennett calls our network neutrality amendment ‘fascist’ and lauds sell-out Charlie Gonzales for ‘fighting fascism’. I’m confused. I thought we were left-wing communists.

As of this morning, more than 1,500 blogs have taken up the cause, posting links to SavetheInternet.com or urging their readers to take action by calling on members of Congress to stand firm in defense of Internet freedom. And the Hill is hearing it.

“We would not have turned the corner in this fight without your blogs, your voices,” Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass) said yesterday during a teleconference with a handful of bloggers. “We need to put every member of Congress on record on where they stand on the future of the Internet,” Markey said. That momentum has shifted in Congress, “is a reflection of the rumbling in cyberspace about what’s going on with this bill.”

Markey is now rallying colleagues on the left and the right to support the introduction of his Network Neutrality Amendment onto the full floor next week.

But it’s an uphill battle. For the amendment to be voted upon by all members, it has to first get approval from the gatekeepers at the House Rules Committee — which Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi calls “the free world’s outstanding bureaucratic abomination — a tiny, airless closet deep in the labyrinth of the Capitol where some of the very meanest people on earth spend their days cleaning democracy like a fish.”

This 13 member committee (nine Republicans; four Democrats) holds Congress in its grip. If the Rules Committee votes down your amendment, your amendment is DOA.

Bloggers are banding together to ensure that no member of Congress gets off the hook that easily.

“There’s a white hot firestorm on the issue on Capitol Hill,” Matt Stoller said in a post at MyDD. “No one wants to see the telcos make a radical change to the Internet and screw this medium up, except, well, the telcos.”

Politicians get scared when they realize the public is paying attention. As the blogosphere catches fire, momentum is shifting for our cause. Whereas before, the big telephone companies and their coin-opertaed lobbyists were confident that Congress would simply roll over, today, no member of Congress can vote with the telecom cartel without suffering repercussions.

The public is now watching and we will not stand for any law that threatens Internet freedom. (…read the full story)

Will the Internet become, in the words of AT&T’s CEO, their private “pipes” or will it remain “the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed”? Jeff Chester writes about the citizens uprising that has, in the words of Congreeswoman Anna Eshoo, spread like a”prairie fire” across the country.

Chester on our work:

Network neutrality would help ensure that Internet serves the interests of diversity of speech. As the new Savetheinternet coalition put it, network neutrality is the equivalent of the Internet’s First Amendment.

He describes what’s at stake for giant telephone companies:

…an unfettered open road is directly at odds with the broadband business plans of AT&T (formerly SBC), Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon. The cable and telephone industry see enormous revenues as operators of a private Internet toll-road.

And how the rest of us stand to suffer as a result of telco plans to dismantle Network Neutrality:

With the federal non-discrimination policy now toast, the phone and cable companies could embark in earnest with plans to — in their words — “monetize” digital distribution. Through their sole control over America’s residential broadband pipes (they have more than 90% of the market), they planned to set up a multi-tiered and pay-as-you-go private internet highway.

What’s ahead:

There is now growing optimism among “save the Internet” supporters that the Senate, which will soon take up a broadband communications bill, will endorse a neutrality rule. A bi-partisan plan to do just that has already been prepared by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Me.) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND).

And read Jeff’s other article just posted at The Nation.

We’ve got a tally of the naughty and the nice from yesterday’s vote here.

Watch the vote here.

250,000 people. In less than a week. Americans like their internet.

The SavetheInternet.com Coalition today announced that in less than a week it had collected more than 250,000 signatures calling on the House Energy & Commerce Committee to protect Internet freedom by passing the “Markey Amendment” today. Groups on the right and left have worked together, and both sides of the political blogosphere have galvanized behind this political issue — with nearly 500 blogs linking to www.SavetheInternet.com within days.Major telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon are spending millions of dollars to get Congress to change the rules to let them discriminate on the Internet — forcing Web sites to pay “protection money” to ensure their sites will work properly.

“Internet freedom is under attack today by telecom companies who are spending millions lobbying Congress to gut Network Neutrality, the First Amendment of the Internet,” said Timothy Karr, campaign director of Free Press. “Net Neutrality ensures that the public can view the smallest blog just as easily as the largest corporate Web site by preventing companies like AT&T from rigging the playing field for only the highest-paying sites and services.”

“The bill before us permits private taxation of the Internet,” said Michigan Rep. John Dingell this week.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California has opened the halls of Congress to you and me — but we must act today. She’s asked citizens to co-sponsor Rep. Ed Markey’s net neutrality amendment. All you need do is visit Pelosi’s site and sign below the “Save the Internet” statement. Here’s a snippet:

We, the undersigned, oppose the lack of Network Neutrality protections in the the COPE Act, sponsored by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX). We strongly urge passage of the Network Neutrality amendment sponsored by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), along with Representatives Rick Boucher (D-VA), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), and Jay Inslee (D-WA).

Whereas, the free and open nature of the Internet has fostered unprecedented innovation and economic growth;

Whereas, a fundamental part of the Internet’s nature is the fact that no one owns it and it is open to all comers;

Whereas, the Barton Bill would block the FCC from restoring meaningful protections for Internet consumers and entrepreneurs, and from prohibiting the imposition of bottleneck taxes and other discriminatory actions on the part of broadband network operators, such as AT&T and Verizon;

Whereas, the imposition of additional fees for Internet content providers would unduly burden web-based small businesses, start-ups, as well as communications for non-commercial users, religious speech, civic involvement, and exercising our First Amendment freedoms;

Whereas, the Markey amendment will effectively thwart attempts by broadband behemoths to block, impair, or degrade a consumer’s ability to access any lawful Internet content, application, or service; will protect my right to attach any device for use with a broadband connection,; will ensure that phone and cable companies cannot favor themselves or affiliated parties to the detriment of other broadband competitors, innovators, and independent entrepreneurs; and it will prohibit the broadband Internet providers from charging extra fees and warping the web in a multi-tiered network of bandwidth haves and have-nots.

Therefore, I join as a citizen co-sponsor of the Markey Amendment to save the Internet as we know it.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. . . Sign on as soon as you can.

Here’s video of Ed Markey’s pro-net neutrality amendment presented in Committee (the text of the amendment is here, in PDF format). Markey is very aggressive about protecting internet freedom. Here’s the first paragraph from his opening statement:

Tomorrow, I will be offering a “Network Neutrality” amendment, cosponsored by Mr. Boucher, Ms. Eshoo, and Mr. Inslee, to preserve the Internet and its open, non-discriminatory nature. Since the Subcommittee vote, dozens of web blogs have started talking about this issue. A broad coalition has launched web campaigns, such as www.savetheinternet.com, and www.dontmesswiththenet.com. These coalitions are diverse and growing hourly. They include leading Internet companies such as Ebay, Yahoo, Amazon, as well as entrepreneurs, small businesses, consumer groups, Common Cause, Gun Owners of America, the National Religious Broadcasters, moveon.org, the ACLU, and thousands of concerned citizens. I welcome the support of the Internet community in our legislative efforts.

The reason for the heightened interest is that tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of American businesses use and rely upon the Internet every day. In addition to its vital economic role, the Internet is also an unparalleled vehicle for open communications by non-commercial users, for religious speech, for civic involvement, and our First Amendment freedoms.

Yet the Internet is at endangered because of the misguided provisions of the bill before us, which put at grave risk the Internet as an engine of innovation, job creation, and economic growth. The bill permits the imposition of new fees, or “broadband bottleneck taxes” for Internet sites to access high-bandwidth consumers. This will stifle openness, endanger our global competitiveness, and warp the web into a tiered Internet of bandwidth haves and have-nots. It is the introduction of creeping Internet protectionism into the free and open World Wide Web.

Tomorrow’s network neutrality debate will present members with a choice. It is a choice between favoring the broadband designs of a small handful of very large companies or safeguarding the dreams of thousands of inventors, entrepreneurs, and small businesses. Tomorrow we will either vote to preserve the Internet as we know it, or instead, vote to fundamentally and detrimentally alter it.

I’d of course be remiss if I didn’t mention that Alyssa Milano blogged about the issue today.