Thanks!

In their second editorial in less than a month, the New York Times gets it right on Net Neutrality. They join the ranks of other major US dailies — including the San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times and Houston Chronicle — that have come out in support of Internet freedom.

“The World Wide Web is the most democratic mass medium there has ever been,” writes Adam Cohen in today’s Times:

Freedom of the press, as the saying goes, belongs only to those who own one. Radio and television are controlled by those rich enough to buy a broadcast license. But anyone with an Internet-connected computer can reach out to a potential audience of billions.

Cohen writes that the Web was invented using open, decentralized architecture in a way “that allowed anyone with a computer to connect to it and begin receiving and sending information.” This network neutrality allows for the extraordinary growth of Internet commerce and communication. According to Cohen, the blogging phenomenon is possible because individuals can create Web sites that can be seen by anyone with Internet access. He adds:

The companies fighting net neutrality have been waging a misleading campaign, with the slogan “hands off the Internet,” that tries to look like a grass-roots effort to protect the Internet in its current form. What they actually favor is stopping the government from protecting the Internet, so they can get their own hands on it.

Today’s Times’ commentary echoes an earlier editorial, which stated that the democratic Internet “would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access, and slower to navigate.”

Our Net Neutrality forces have been gaining strength to fight this extortion:

One group, Savetheinternet.com, says it has collected more than 700,000 signatures on a petition. Last week, a bipartisan bill favoring net neutrality, sponsored by James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, and John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, won a surprisingly lopsided vote in the House Judiciary Committee.

Sir Tim [Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web] argues that service providers may be hurting themselves by pushing for tiered pricing. The Internet’s extraordinary growth has been fueled by the limitless vistas the Web offers surfers, bloggers and downloaders. Customers who are used to the robust, democratic Web may not pay for one that is restricted to wealthy corporate content providers.

“That’s not what we call Internet at all,” says Sir Tim. “That’s what we call cable TV.”

And that’s why AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth and their front groups want to seize control of the Web — to gross billions of dollars as the new video czars, at the expense of everyone else.

Also noted: here’s another editorial today, supporting Net Neutrality from an educator’s perspective.

Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee passed H.R. 5417, the “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006,” which I introduced with Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, Ranking Member John Conyers and Rep. Rick Boucher last week. This is the first bill with real protections for Net Neutrality that has passed any committee in Congress, and I am proud to be a part of it.

The bill requires broadband providers to operate their networks in a non-discriminatory manner and makes sure that the phone and cable companies cannot favor or block access to the Web sites or online services that they pick instead of the consumer. It will keep the Internet an open and free marketplace of ideas and services chosen by consumers instead of big corporations. It will also guard against those who own “the pipes” gleaning profits by creating a virtual toll road.

H.R. 5417 was introduced by a bipartisan coalition from the Judiciary Committee and passed out of the Committee by a vote of 20-13. Fourteen Democrats and six Republicans voted in favor of it, and 13 Republicans voted against it. One Democrat voted present.

The Internet has revolutionized the way Americans communicate with one another and do business. It’s only right to keep that revolution where it belongs — in the hands of Internet users instead of the phone and cable companies.

The next hurdle for Net Neutrality is whether we will have a full vote on the House floor. If you care about the freedom that Net Neutrality protects, contact your Member of Congress and ask that H.R. 5417 be scheduled to come before the full House of Representatives as either a separate bill or an amendment. Urge them to vote for Net Neutrality protection!

The broad, nonpartisan movement for Internet freedom notched a major victory today, when a bipartisan majority of the House Judiciary Committee passed the “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006″ — a bill that offers meaningful protections for Network Neutrality, “the First Amendment of the Internet.”

20 members of the Commitee (6 Republicans and 14 Democrats) voted for the bipartisan Bill, and only 13 against.

Today’s vote would have been unthinkable three weeks ago. It shows that the politicians are listening to the vast number of citizens who don’t want the Internet to become the private domain of the cable and telephone monopolies. Today’s vote is a milestone for the fast-growing movement to protect the public interest and defend Internet freedom.

In other good news, our petition drive today surpassed 750,000 signatures, as many of you flooded Congress with calls and letters.

Since we launched in late April, more than 700 groups spanning the political spectrum have joined the SavetheInternet.com Coalition, including MoveOn.org, the Christian Coalition, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Gun Owners of America, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the American Library Association, and Craig Newmark of Craigslist.

The bipartisan “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006″ (H.R. 5417) next moves to the full House after Congress returns from its Memorial Day recess. The SavetheInternet.com Coalition is urging people to continue writing and calling their members of Congress until Network Neutrality becomes law.

The fight is far from over, but today was a good day for Internet freedom and open democracy.

Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott testified before the Senate today on behalf of SavetheInternet.com coalition members Free Press, Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America. This from his statement:

Civic engagement on network neutrality represents the most diverse public response to a communications policy issues in recent history. A grassroots effort led by the “Save the Internet” Coalition (www.savetheinternet.com) includes nearly 700 organizations, from small community groups to large national organizations. Banded together in this coalition are the Gun Owners of America, Feminist Majority, Parents Television Council, American Library Association, Consumers Union, and Educause. Network Neutrality is also supported by AARP, the ACLU, the Christian Coalition and the National Religious Broadcasters.

More than 700,000 individuals have signed a petition to Congress demanding Internet freedom through meaningful Network Neutrality. Thousands of bloggers of all political stripes and interests, from Daily Kos and Instapundit to video gamers, musicians and educators, have championed the issue and encouraged public involvement in the campaign. The world’s most renowned experts on Internet technology, law, and policy have written prominently on the issue. This massive civic coalition stands next to a similarly large and unprecedented coalition in the commercial sector, joining together the Internet content and technology industries. Google, Amazon, Intel, Microsoft, eBay, are joined by hundreds of smaller online retailers and technology firms. The campaign to preserve Network Neutrality protections is perhaps the most diverse set of public and private interests backing any single issue in Washington today.

Scott urged the Senators on the Commerce Committee to support Sens. Snowe and Dorgan’s “Internet Freedom Preservation Act.” Scott concluded:

The choice before the Committee is clear: allow consumers through an unfettered online marketplace to decide which businesses succeed or fail; or allow the dominant telephone and cable duopoly to use its marketplace power to exclude the entrepreneurs who offer consumers affordable and innovative communications products and services. We urge you to adopt the former direction. The future of the Internet, the health of the communications marketplace and the well-being of consumers depends on it.

Read Scott’s full statement here.

The House Judiciary Committee is going to “mark up” Representatives Sensenbrenner and Conyers’ good Net Neutrality bill this morning (watch the Committee vote via the Web). Many in the committee have been pressured by the big telcos to vote down the net neutrality provisions.

These are the members to contact on the bipartisan bill. Urge them to support the Sensenbrenner-Conyers “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006″ (HR 5417) in the Judiciary Committee today — and to support it without amendment. Saying without amendment is key. Here are the members who need to hear from you right now:

Marty Meehan (D-Mass. 5th)
Phone: (202) 225-3411
Fax: (202) 226-0771

Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y. 9th)
Phone: (202) 225-6616
Fax: (202) 226-7253

Howard Berman (D-Calif. 28th)
Phone: 202-225-4695
Fax: 202-225-3196

William Delahunt (D-Mass. 10th)
Phone: (202) 225-3111
Fax: (202) 225-5658

Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas 18th)
(202) 225-3816 phone
(202) 225-3317 Fax

Bobby Scott (D-Va. 3rd)
Phone: (202) 225-8351
Fax: (202) 225-8354

Chris Van Hollen (D-Md. 8th)
Phone: (202) 225-5341
Fax: (202) 225-0375

Maxine Waters (D-Calif. 35th)
Phone: (202) 225-2201
Fax: (202) 225-7854

Mel Watt (D-N.C. 12th)
Tel. (202) 225-1510
Fax (202) 225-1512

Robert Wexler (D-Fla. 19th)
phone: (202) 225-3001
fax: (202) 225-5974

Howard Coble (R-NC 6th)
phone: (202) 225-3065
fax: (202) 225-8611

Elton Gallegly (R-CA 24^th)
phone: (202) 225-5811
fax: (202) 225-1100

Bob Goodlatte (R-VA 6^th)
phone: (202) 225-5431
fax: (202) 225-9681

Steve Chabot (R-OH 5^th)
phone: (202) 225-2216
fax: (202) 225-3012 (fax)

Dan Lungren (R-CA 3^rd)
phone: (202) 225-5716
fax: (202) 226-1298

William Jenkins (R-TN 1^st)
phone: (202) 225-6356
fax: (202) 225-5714

John Hostettler (R-IN 8^th)
phone: (202) 225-4636
fax: (202) 225-3284

Mark Green (R-WI 8^th)
phone: (202) 225-5665
fax: (202) 225-5729

Ric Keller (R-FL 8^th)
phone: (202) 225-2176
fax: (202) 225-0999

A fellow blogger at “p2p Blog” just forwarded this tidbit on the latest telco-fueled effort to scare Americans to side with AT&T against Net Neutrality. Be on the alert for friendly callers bearing lies about increased costs to consumers.

Here’s what “k0″ had to report about this latest telco effort to deceive customers:

I just got a phone call by a nice lady that tried to persuade me that net neutrality is bad. Because there is an internet price increase coming really really soon, and Google wants me to pay for it.

The dialog went something like this:

(obligatory awkward call center pause)

Her: “Hello, I’m calling from a non profit organization called TV 4 US, and we call consumers about an upcoming internet price hike. The big internet companies, like, (small pause) Microsoft want you to pay for that. Do you think that is fair?”

Me, confused: “Uhm, what are you calling about?”

Her: “The internet is going to be more expensive, because big companies like Microsoft and Google are wasting all our bandwidth. Do you think consumers should pay for that? Or should the big companies that are wasting the bandwidth pay for that?”

At which point I tried to argue that companies use bandwidth because consumers use their services, but of course she was trained to end her call as soon as she would hit a road block.

I managed to get a little bit of information about her non profit before she hung up tho: TV 4 US apparently doesn’t have a website. Maybe they want to save some of that precious bandwidth before Google and Microsoft are gonna waste it all. But they can be reached at 888-346-1400. Just in case you want to tell them what you think about dumbing down policy issues.

Indeed, “TV 4 US” (they do have a Web site) is yet another AT&T-backed front group that is burning through telco cash to spread the lie that Net Neutrality will cost consumers.

What’s really costing consumers isn’t Net Neutrality but the phone companies’ multi-million-dollar campaign to kill it. Companies like AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth have spent tens of millions of dollars on canned phone calls, advertisements, DC lobbyists and phony front groups to squash our genuine grassroots effort.

Where do you think they get that money? That’s right. A portion of your phone bill goes towards creating campaigns that are designed to deceive consumers into acting against their best interests.

For more on the telco fictions, check out this newly released report from Free Press, Consumer Union and the Consumer Federation of America.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee The inventor of the World Wide Web has warned that the internet would enter a “dark period” if large ISPS were allowed to break it up into separate tiers.

Sir Tim told a packed conference in Edinburgh on Tuesday: “What is very important from my point of view is that there is one web. Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring. I think it is one and will remain as one.”

Berners-Lee said the correct way of running the internet was that people should pay for a connection, but not face any kind of discrimination when they searched for information.

“There is an effort by some companies in the US to change this. There’s an attempt to get to a situation where if I want to watch a TV station across the Internet, that TV station must have paid to transmit to me,” he added pointing to ISPs’ near monopoly control of markets in the States.

“I hope that the U.S. will come to the right decision (as) there is a very strong groundswell of opinion for net neutrality,” Berners-Lee said.

Berners-Lee also suggested a chilling effect on voting and democracy could happen should telecom companies gain the right to enforce a tiered Internet.

“It’s better and more efficient for us all if we have a separate market where we get our connectivity, and a separate market where we get our content. Information is what I use to make all my decisions. Not just what to buy, but how to vote,” Berners-Lee later told a room full of reporters.

The telco cartel wants to gut the Internet and portion it off to the companies that pay their broadband tolls. Companies like AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth seek to get rid of Net Neutrality so they can muscle aside the real online revolutionaries — the small-guy innovators who historically have made the Internet a beacon for democracy, economic growth and new ideas.

In the words of Internet architect Vint Cerf, the Internet is “innovation without permission.” That is the genius of the network that has proven to be a wonderland for new entrepreneurs and ideas, with all the intelligence residing with the end users and not those who control the pipes.

Now, large phone companies like AT&T have unleashed a million-dollar-a-week spending spree to influence Washington decision-makers, pass telco-friendly regulations and change the Internet forever. They want to control online content by placing gateways on the on-ramps and exits to the information superhighway. This is why people on the right and left have joined with every major consumer group, Internet rights advocacy and public interest organization to fight AT&T and their lobbyists.

The groups and organizations that now support Net Neutrality range from the National Religious Broadcasters, the Gun Owners of America, and the Christian Coalition, to the American Civil Liberties Union, Free Press, and Moveon.org. As Craig Fields of the Gun Owners of America: “Whenever you see people on the left and right joining together against something Congress is getting ready to do, it’s been my experience that what Congress is getting ready to do is basically un-American.”

Here is just a sampling of what other people and organizations are saying:

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web:

“When seventeen years ago, I designed the Web, I did not have to ask anyone’s permission. We pay for connection to the Net as though it were a cloud which magically delivers our packets. We may pay for a higher or a lower quality of service. We may pay for a service which has the characteristics of being good for video, or quality audio. But we each pay to connect to the Net, but no one can pay for exclusive access to me. The Internet is increasingly becoming the dominant medium binding us. The neutral communications medium is essential to our society. It is the basis of a fair competitive market economy. It is the basis of democracy, by which a community should decide what to do. Let us protect the neutrality of the net.”

Roberta Combs, the President of Christian Coalition of America:

“Christian Coalition is joining a broad array of organizations, representing consumers, businesses, and all ends of the political spectrum. The Coalition is committed to working on behalf of our supporters to ensure that the Internet remains the free marketplace of ideas, products and services that it is today. Under the new rules, there is nothing to stop the c able and phone companies from not allowing consumers to have access to speech that they don’t support…. We urge Congress to move aggressively to save the Internet — and allow ideas rather than money to control what Americans can access on the World Wide Web. We urge all Americans to contact their Congressmen and Senators and tell them to save the Internet and to support ‘Net Neutrality’.”

Chellie Pingree, President & CEO, Common Cause:

“A two-tiered Internet would put small businesses, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, political candidates and local governments at a significant disadvantage and stifle the innovation that has brought us Google, eBay, the blogosphere, instant messaging and so much more. Failure to preserve net neutrality now would open the door to allowing Internet service providers to discriminate against websites and services that can’t or won’t pay for access to the ”fast lane.” If network providers are allowed to control the flow of information, the open and freewheeling nature of the Internet could be lost.”

The Financial Services Roundtable:

“The FSR supports ‘net neutrality’ provisions designed to prohibit Internet network operators and ISPs from blocking or slowing access to Internet content based on the amount of money client companies or consumers are able or willing to pay. The Internet should not become an exclusive medium for the highest bidders, nor should financial services firms be forced to pay higher prices in order to meet regulatory requirements for security or transaction speed.”

At a press event in Washington today, Grammy-nominated musician Moby (along with Rep. Ed Markey of Mass.) introduced Artists and Musicians for Internet Freedom, an alliance supporting the SavetheInternet.com coalition that includes the Dixie Chicks, The Roots, Wilco, R.E.M., Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and other prominent acts. See the video here.

Read Moby’s comments here. Some excerpts:

And Internet freedom is not an irrelevant issue – because it affects everything else. The Internet has revolutionized democratic participation, economic innovation, free speech, and the arts.

There’s a reason groups as diverse as MoveOn.org, Gun Owners of America, Christian Coalition, consumer advocates, and church groups are working together on this issue.

And there’s a reason people’s favorite websites – Google, Amazon, eBay, Craigslist – are all fighting together to preserve Net Neutrality.

If Congress guts Net Neutrality, independent music and news sites would be choked off, consumer choice would be limited, and the Internet will be become a private toll road auctioned off by companies like AT&T.

Click here to learn more about the musicians’ coalition.

Adding to the diversity of support for Net Neutrality, the Christian Coalition of America announced its support yesterday for the effort to amend pending telecom legislation in Congress in order “to prevent the large phone and cable companies from discriminating against web sites.”  This from Christian Coalition president Roberta Colmes:

“Christian Coalition is joining a broad array of organizations, representing consumers, businesses, and all ends of the political spectrum. The Coalition is committed to working on behalf of our supporters to ensure that the Internet remains the free marketplace of ideas, products and services that it is today…

“We urge Congress to move aggressively to save the Internet — and allow ideas rather than money to control what Americans can access on the World Wide Web. We urge all Americans to contact their Congressmen and Senators and tell them to save the Internet and to support ‘Net Neutrality’.” 

Read their full press release here.