250,000 petition signatures for the Markey Amendment
April 26th, 2006 by Matt Stoller250,000 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.
