More 2008 presidential candidates are making an open and neutral Internet a part of their platform. Others prefer fence sitting, perhaps fearful to upset one of Washington’s most entrenched and moneyed corporate lobbies.

As we reported earlier, Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson, among others, have all stated their strong support for legal protections for Net Neutrality. They were joined recently by GOP candidate Mike Huckabee, who last week told a collection of bloggers that Net Neutrality must be preserved.

But another GOP candidate, John McCain, failed to commit one way or the other. In a calculated response, McCain told an interviewer: “Anything that impinges on the ability for people to have access needs to be considered very carefully. I worry about the consolidation of the pipes.”

McCain then added: “When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment” — using an archetypal political tactic, he plays to both sides of the argument while taking a stance on neither. After his many years on the Senate Commerce Committee, you’d have thought this candidate could have been more decisive. (Though one reporter has him supporting Net Neutrality).

Edwards Out Front On Spectrum

Tell the FCC: Save the Public Airwaves

Edwards today upped the ante, calling upon the Federal Communications Commission to use the upcoming auction of public “spectrum” to make the Internet more affordable, accessible and open to everyone.

In a letter sent today, Edwards urged the federal agency to “seize the chance to transform the Internet and the future” by requiring that as much as half of the soon-to-be-available public airwaves be reserved for open access.

This spectrum would open the newest Internet platform to new entrants and innovators and allow them to prove themselves in the market by offering better products to consumers.

Edwards also asked the FCC to require that anyone who wins rights to use the public airwaves should not “discriminate among data and services and to allow any device to be attached to their service.”

The FCC should be extremely guarded against handing over our wireless Internet to the same network giants that are acting in bad faith to stifle competition and innovation on wired lines.

>> Click Here to take action on this issue

These companies, including AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, have already stated their desire to become the Internet’s gatekeepers — to not only control your access to the Internet’s “pipes” but also your ability to connect to content that travels through them.

Access to communications technology deserves a prominent place, alongside healthcare, education and taxes in the public discourse in the run-up to the 2008 elections. If our country’s next leader can’t help get more Americans connected to fast, open and affordable Internet, we all stand to lose.

We’d like to challenge all candidates to take a stand on issues of neutrality, openness, access and affordability. It’s good to see today that at least one of them is taking the lead, but where, specifically do the others stand?

Harold Feld of Media Access Project suggests questions that all candidates should be ready to answer:

Where do you stand on shaping our wireless future? Do you support more of the status quo or do you want to see something different? Do you agree with the folks at Comcast, AT&T and T-Mobile that we live in the best of all possible worlds and the government shouldn’t try to “influence the market” or “pick winners?” Or do you think it’s time to give a real boost to wireless broadband for ALL Americans, free innovation at the edge of the wireless network, and — oh yeah — promote all that democracy and civic engagement stuff?

Get ready with your own questions when the next presidential hopeful comes knocking on your door.

On Thursday, members of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition came forward with a plan to make the Internet more neutral, open and affordable for everyone.

A centerpiece of the plan is the use of newly available public “spectrum,” which can deliver high-speed Internet signals almost everywhere in the country.

Take Action: The Public Airwaves for the Public Good

Most people haven’t heard about this issue, or know that such valuable airwaves are up for grabs.

This is important stuff. What’s at stake is the future of communications in our country.

Here’s where things stand:

This broad slice of spectrum once beamed the Brady Bunch, The Cosby’s, Charlie’s Angels and the A-Team into tens of millions of homes. The inevitable switch from analog to digital TV means that this precious air is now available for other uses.

The government hopes that revenues from its sale (anticipated to be as high as $30 billion) will help pay down the national deficit, especially high since we went to war in Iraq

The Federal Communications Commission is now deciding how to structure its sale. The federal agency has the power to attach conditions to the use of our air; As it’s public domain, we have the right to demand that it serve the public interest.

If used right, this new spectrum could revolutionize the ways we connect to one another — and to laptops, cell phones, PDAs, music players and other mobile Internet devices. It can deliver a wireless Internet into your house without the need for a telephone wire or cable modem.

Its signal passes through concrete buildings and over mountains; and can connect tens of million of Americans that are now ignored by wire-line Internet “incumbents” such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

Here’s the rub. Phone and cable lobbyists are pressuring the FCC to hand over our airwaves to their bosses. They plan to horde spectrum and stifle competitive and cheaper alternatives to their legacy networks.

This would be a disaster. After years of phone and cable company control over our Internet marketplace, the United States has fallen to 15th in the world in high-speed Internet rankings, with few choices and some of the highest prices for the slowest speeds in the world. We will continue to fall as long as we let phone and cable execs dictate Internet access for more than 96 percent of American users.

It’s really important that we spread the word and get more people involved in telling the FCC how our spectrum should be used.

We don’t want more of the same. These airwaves should be employed for the public good. They should be used to develop a wireless alternative to the telephone-cable market duopoly.

Yesterday, member groups — including Consumer Federation of America, Free Press, Media Access Project, Public Knowledge and US PIRG — urged the FCC “to ensure that new spectrum is offered on an open and nondiscriminatory basis.” (You can read their full filing by clicking here.)

With open networks, the rest of the world has rapidly adopted high-speed, Internet platforms for education, economic innovation, creativity and civic participation. Countries like South Korea, Japan, France, Canada have leapfrogged the United States and now offer faster Internet connections at far lower prices.

It’s time we caught up.

>> You can help clear the path for a technology that will deliver faster, more open and affordable Internet for everyone by taking action here.

>> To learn more about the upcoming auction, read these recent articles in Wired Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Forbes Magazine and MyDD.

>> To learn more about the public interest and the public airwaves, visit Save Our Spectrum at Free Press.

Former Vice President Al Gore extols the virtues of Net Neutrality in his newly released book “The Assault on Reason,” writing “neutrality should be the central tenet that will set us on a path toward an open, democratic Internet where free speech and free markets are encouraged.”

Gore applauds the grassroots efforts of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition, whose many supporters used the Internet to save the Internet: “When the first skirmishes over net neutrality were fought in 2006, many in the Internet community who agree with the point of view I share mobilized and used the tools they had available on the Internet to defend its independence.”

Fighting on Our Side for a Neutral Web

At that time, supporters were posting dozens of homemade videos on YouTube. College students created Facebook communities that grew to include tens of thousands of people while others crafted fliers and handed them out at their student unions. The movement had taken a life of its own – one that was limited only by the creativity of our online supporters.

Robin “Roblimo” Miller made one such video in his Florida back yard where he sums it up well: “The whole point of Net Neutrality is not Google. It’s not Yahoo. It’s about me and my little video here and you and any video that you might shoot getting out in an easy and fast and efficient manner.”

Gore calls on Congress to lead the charge in protecting neutrality:

“More than one and a half million citizens contacted Congress and more than eight hundred organizations joined the SavetheInternet Coalition, organized by the upstart media reform organization Free Press, using innovative online mobilization tactics … The public is finally involved in the debate about the future of the Internet and many are organizing to shape that debate.”

Gore concludes in the final pages of his book that the key to redeeming our democracy is to ensure that we all are “well and fully connected” to an open, neutral and robust public Internet forum.

“I truly believe the most important factor is the preservation of the Internet’s potential for becoming the new neutral marketplace of ideas that is so needed for the revitalization of American democracy,” he writes. “People are not only fighting for free speech online, but they are also working to keep the Internet a decentralized, ownerless medium of mass communication and commerce.”

As Gore’s book climbs the best seller list, we can only hope that more Americans join this call for a more neutral, democratic and accessible Internet.

Two leading thinkers at the intersection of technology and politics on Friday challenged all 2008 presidential candidates to adopt a comprehensive technical platform that includes protections for Net Neutrality and the expansion of open Internet access to available public spectrum.

Speaking during the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) Conference in New York, Andrew Rasiej said: “It’s time that high speed access to the Internet be recognized as a public good, like water, available to all Americans at a low cost.

The Medium Is the Message

In a release circulated later in the day, Rasiej, who runs PDF and TechPresident alongside editor Micah Sifry, called on candidates to “firmly support ‘Net Neutrality’ and forbid Internet service providers from discriminating among content based on origin, application or type.” The release added:

“By issuing this call, they are elevating the issue’s prominence in the election and asking voters to judge America’s next leader by how well he or she would accelerate the country’s conversion from the industrial age to the connected economy of the 21st century.”

“We’re calling on the next inhabitant of the White House to articulate more clearly where they stand and what they will do to bring the United States into the 21st century,” Sifry said Friday. “The Internet is the dial tone of the 21st century. If you aren’t connected, it’s as if you don’t have a phone.”

“Politicians still don’t know the difference between a server and a waiter,” Rasiej said during the conference “Technology shifts the power much more into the hands of the voter.” With this change, we need to be certain that citizen’s Web connection is not manipulated in ways that could discourage his or her participation.

Some in the race have already come out on neutrality. Let’s see how soon they take up other components of the PDF platform.

Companies fighting the drive to make Net Neutrality the online law of the land are back with more shady tactics designed to confuse the public over the issue.

Media Minutes reports today that people in Oregon are receiving automated telemarketing calls urging them “to call Senator Gordon Smith to oppose any congressional intervention into the Net Neutrality debate.”

Real People v. Robo-Calls

The recorded message portrays the issue as a fight between phone and cable companies and big Internet firms like Google and Yahoo, when in reality Network Neutrality is not a battle of corporate titans but a grassroots concern that rallied the support of more than 1.5 million Internet users.

It is more about the rights of citizens, small businesses, bloggers, musicians and independent Web sites to freely communicate online without having the phone and cable companies discriminate against their content in favor of data from larger corporations.

A bill to restore Network Neutrality called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act is pending in Senate and has 10 sponsors so far including Oregon’s other Senator, Ron Wyden.

These “robo-calls” in Oregon never mention where they are coming from or who paid for the uninvited intrusion.

Elsewhere, a group calling itself the American Consumer Institute emerged from obscurity touting a new report which claims that a federal Net Neutrality law would cost consumers billions of dollars in higher Internet connection fees.

The problem is the American Consumer Institute is nothing but a front for a former chief economist of the phone company now known as Verizon — who also moonlights as a consultant for the telecom industry.

If you go to the ACI Website, however, nowhere does it mention this obvious conflict of interest.

Curiously, when three leading trade representatives for the phone, cable and wireless industries were pressed before Congress yesterday to list their biggest concerns about regulations and their impact on providing faster Internet services to more Americans, none mentioned Net Neutrality as a problem.

So why is it that they’re spending tens of millions of dollars on phony Astroturf efforts to mislead the public on the issue? Stay tuned.

Chad Hurley, chief executive and co-founder of YouTube, went to Washington this week to testify on behalf of an open Internet. Hurley told members of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet that a non-discriminatory Internet was the key to the success of YouTube and other Web innovations.

>> Watch our video blog featuring Hurley and others

Because of an open Internet YouTube was able to solve people’s problems with creating and sharing online video, he said.

“We were able to develop a service that was able to compete with [others] in the market. And because of that we have been able to provide a service that has been helpful for people and able to spur innovation in the video market online.”

Net Neutrality Sparks Innovation

Hurley was joined at the witness table by Blake Krikorian, chairman and CEO of Sling Media, creator of the Slingbox. Krikorian told the subcommittee that the success of his businesses was contingent upon the open and neutral architecture of the Internet. “Because of the open Internet … we were able to develop a service that could compete with [much larger] competitors in the market,” Krikorian said.

If he had gone to venture capitalists with a plan that said he needed to first gain approval from network providers like AT&T, “we would have just been kicked in the pants out the door,” Krikorian said, adding:

“Things are being created every day that none of us ever thought about before. Without having that open flexibility there’s just no way in heck this stuff could ever come to life.”

Making the Next YouTube Possible

Rep. Anna Eshoo of California told the witnesses that the future of online video will depend on how Congress resolves the issue of Net Neutrality. “Consumers must be able to access that content in the manner in which they choose,” she said.

After the hearing, Hurley told Chairman Ed Markey that an open Internet allowed YouTube to start its business. “We were on the same playing field as everyone else on the Internet, starting out of our garage working on this project,” he said, adding:

“Because of that we were able to compete. At the same time consumers had the same ability to upload content on our site, to view content on our site without anyone discriminating.”

Hurley and Krikorian’s comments echo those made before them by World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Net Neutrality has allowed the Internet to become a true competitive marketplace with low barriers to entry, equal opportunity and consumer choice.

This open architecture will allow the next Googles, YouTubes and eBays of the world to emerge out of dorm rooms or garages or anywhere else where creative ideas are born.

If you remove Net Neutrality from the Internet, you remove this economic creativity. The market tilts in favor the networks gatekeepers and against real innovation.

Next week, Markey plans to convene a panel of witnesses to discuss ways to better map broadband penetration in America to find better ways to get open and affordable broadband to more people. Stay tuned.

A shadowy “consumer” group emerged from obscurity today to bleat about the dangers of Net Neutrality. And no sooner had their press release hit the PR Newswire than a chorus of industry apologists began waving it around as proof positive that Net Neutrality is a cancer on the Internet.

That the shills have circled alone should be evidence that something here doesn’t quite smell right. That this group is little known to the established consumer groups that are a part of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition should set off every olfactory alarm.

Sock Puppet Alert: Stephen Pociask

And so it has. Bob Williams who blogs for the Consumers Union was the first to cry foul.

“We had no idea that Net Neutrality — the concept of preventing Internet providers from speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination — would be so devastating to consumers,” Williams writes in a sincerity-laced response to the American Consumer Institute’s report against Net Neutrality.

“Like nearly every other major consumer group, we here at Consumers Union have been under the impression that Net Neutrality would actually benefit consumers.”

The ACI report claims that protecting Net Neutrality would “force millions of Americans to drop their broadband subscriptions.” It says that this would amount to $69 billion (Not $68 billion. Not $70 billion. $69 billion!) in lost benefits to consumers.

It was the name of the report’s author that caused Williams’ nose to twitch:

The contact name on the American Consumer Institute press release was Stephen Pociask. The name rang a bell with us, but we weren’t sure why. But a quick Google search jogged our memory. Pociask is a telecommunications industry consultant and a former chief economist for Bell Atlantic, which these days is known as Verizon.

I went to the ACI site to confirm. Pociask’s bio was posted by ACI, but surpisingly mention of his work as a telco’s chief economist was nowhere to be found.

How can that be? The American Consumer Institute claims that they do not accept any financial support from corporations. “We only accept assistance from individual consumers and consumer groups,” they claim. “The Institute depends on volunteers, particularly those with significant public policy expertise.”

I’m curious. Who might these contributing “consumer groups” be? And do THEY accept money from corporations. Also, if ACI isn’t paying their “volunteers,” who is?

A quick online check reveals that ACI’s Web site is actually registered to the same “volunteer,” Stephen Pociask, who still works in the telecom industry as a paid consultant.

ACI describes itself as “an independent consumer organization dedicated to improving the lives of American consumers.” But its list of experts includes people with deep ties to phone and cable companies.

Broadband Reports dug some more and concluded that reports like ACI’s “are ultimately gobbled up by lazy journalists for injection into the broader discourse as objective fact.”

Let’s hope these journalists have better sense (har har) this time around.

Tomorrow, May 10, will be one of the very first times a Net Neutrality bill will be heard at the state level. Here in Maine, concerns about how the loss of Net Neutrality would have a negative impact on the local economy has led state legislators to do what they can to protect Mainers’ Internet freedom.

State Senator Ethan Strimling took the lead when he introduced LD 1675 – “An Act to Protect Network Neutrality” — into the state legislature. We are a state of leaders on this issue, as Republican Senator Olympia Snowe is the prime sponsor of the federal Net Neutrality bill. Passing the state bill will provide momentum for her Net Neutrality efforts in Washington.

>> Follow this link to support the Maine bill

Guest Blog Post By Jon Bartholomew in Augusta, Maine

A Maine coalition of organizations, businesses, civic leaders and academics held a press conference yesterday to rally more public support for this important bill. Here is some of what was said:

Shenna Bellows, Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union:

“Net neutrality means a free and open internet and the freedom to choose what content you read and what applications you use. The Internet has always been an arena of democracy where every person could speak up and be heard and the Maine Legislature should do its best to keep it that way by supporting LD 1675.”

Lance Dutson, founder of mainewebreport.com:

“Reinstating Net Neutrality principles is essential to fostering the creative and technology industries upon which the future of Maine’s economy depends. As this state begins to invest in the improvement of our broadband infrastructure, legislators should insist that safeguards are in place to make Maine’s technological growth beneficial to all Maine people. Net neutrality is good for small business and it’s good for Maine.”

Also at the press conference were John Goran of the Community Television Association of Maine, Brian Hiatt of the League of Young Voters, and Rich Brooks of Flyte New Media.

(Click here for audio of the story on Maine Public Radio)

— Jon Bartholomew is the National Media and Democracy Organizer for Common Cause, a SavetheInternet.com Coalition member. More information about Maine’s Net Neutrality efforts can be found by visiting www.maineinternetfreedom.com.

SavetheInternet.com on Tuesday won two prestigious Webby awards in recognition of our historic grassroots campaign to stop phone and cable companies from ruining freedom of choice online.

SavetheInternet.com was awarded “Best Activism Web Site” and Save the Internet: Independence Day, a YouTube favorite, won for “Best Public Service Video”. Both awards fell under the “People’s Voice” category, where winners were determined by hundreds of thousands of votes from all over the world.

In and interesting twist of fate, the People’s Voice vote is sponsored entirely by phone giant Verizon Communications — the same company that is leading the charge to kill off Net Neutrality and pick and choose which content gets priority on your browser.

In accepting the awards we plan to deliver some choice words — five to be exact — to the People’s Voice sponsors, in addition to thanking the millions of activists who took action — online and off — and made SavetheInternet.com the successful grassroots effort it is today.

Hailed as the “Oscars of the Internet” by the New York Times, the Webby Awards will be handed to SavetheInternet.com during ceremonies in New York City on June 4 and 5.