250,000 petition signatures for the Markey Amendment
April 26th, 2006 by Matt250,000 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.
April 26th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
What are examples of internet access being blocked or degraded by competing interests?
April 26th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
Have a look at this page where threats are discussed: http://www.savetheinternet.com/=threat …to a certain extent threats are anticipated or perceived, but yet there are a number of examples of real blockage. I believe this is a valid concern, and the Coalition should advocate vigorously for measures to prevent even the temptation for this kind of abuse — that is, to maintain neutrality.
On the one hand, the notion that my business could begin to bargain for some sort of QoS (quality of service) or SLA (service level agreement) to transport my traffic — a concept that historically has had technical limitations in a packet-switched network — strikes me as a sound business concept. In a digital economy wherein the Internet serves commercial purposes (among other essential purposes), business will want access to grades of service. This situation seems similar to an extent to one choosing to use the U.S. Postal First Class service v. Overnight, Express Mail, or another carrier like FedEx. Likewise, with the Internet, my business might well pay for a host of improved transport capabilities.
On the other hand, I am vigorously opposed to slowing or even preventing my ordinary US Mails from reaching their destination in favor of FedEx traffic. So, it equally strikes me as untenable for any carrier to use that capability to discriminate against traffic sources, destinations, or types (leave aside for the moment any acceptable use policy issues).
The issues are complex, and any efort to sound-bite them is, IMHO, spinning a position. For example, the reasonable person can agree that having FedEx as well as a US Postal system is valuable, and that if one can afford to, and needs to, may use FedEx, who will guarantee a certain delivery window. The two services share air space for planes, and roadways for trucks. But the difference is that niether the US Postal Service nor FedEx own the roadway, and niether supply vehicles to both. So the analogy has its limits.
For that and other reasons, I SUPPORT the Coalition to Save the Internet and its overall cause. While I am all for capitalism and generally free markets, I am equally concerned about abuse/misuse of free market principles, and believe ground-rules with real, enforceable consequences for violations need to be in place. Just my 2-cents.
April 26th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Watching these sessions is so terribly frightening. The ignorance is just astounding. How on earth can these folks be the ones making decisions about the operation of the internet when they couldn’t explain the most fundamental concepts of computing or networking. They continually supplant one term or buzzword for another in completely nonsensical ways. The chairman of the committee metioned, off-hand, unironically, that he uses AOL dailup. Wow. I’m speechless.
April 26th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
Since this is an ‘internal to the US’ issue and having me send a message to a US Congressman is not appropriate since I am not an American, does anyone have links to similar proposals in other parts of the World? I, for instance, am Canadian and would like to know about any versions of this or similar proposals here in my country.
April 29th, 2006 at 12:39 am
To U.S. government (criminals and crooks have to be informed - A fair game is highly crucial), bloggers, and Internet users:
I have an idea. Instead of trying so hard to save Internet, why don’t we the Americans make a major and unprecedented revolution? If U.S. government feels that Internet is threatening their jobs, then it is also threatening to the aliens’ interest which are not related to Americans. So, Americans should revamp the government entirely to be run by Constitutional Internet which is reserved for U.S. citizens only, excluding all non-citizens and legal immigrants (they must stay in America at least 5 or so years to become U.S. citizens).
We, the Americans, should rely on Internet to eliminate the Congress, White House Administration, Federal Reserve Banks, illegal corporations, greedy businesses, and alien lobbying. Transition is necessary. Thereafter, the American citizens should work out and collaborate in making their own laws which are reflected by Internet voting which is inside America. It is like starting with Alabama citizens who depend on Internet to rule their own state, then goes on. The rest of 50 states interacts with the Internet users in Washington D.C. to make some political and business affairs utterly based on the U.S. citizens’ interests. That means President, Senators, Representatives, Republicans, and Democrats must be dumped to be replaced by U.S. citizens who use Internet that can blur right/left wings, Republicans, and Democrats into one. The hidden forces and crimes have to be extinguished. Racism will be individualized without any pertaining with multi-culturalism. The old multi-culturalism should be replaced by multi-individualism free of a conflict-making propaganda.
A centralized team of the Internet officials will replace the U.S. President and his staff. The budget and business management should be overseen by the U.S. citizens and U.S. bloggers for 24 hours every day. It will be no longer politicians representing states and America. It will be just teams of Internet users working in different states plus the central team of Internet users in Washington D.C. U.S. citizens will run their own military and foreign affairs. No more will they be controlled by a small and secretive group. Military is used temporarily until it is obsoleted by Internet which has power to change human awareness and accelerate cultural evolution. Remember this is a free speech from an American - me.