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There’s a pervasive myth that there has been no Internet content discrimination by the large phone and cable companies. “That is simply untrue, ” writes Matt Stoller of BlogPAC.

Stoller points to Cox Cable, which for three months has blocked their customers from accessing the online classifieds super-site, Craigslist. (Disclosure: the company’s founder, Craig Newmark, is a charter member of this coalition)

The cable giant has thus far dodged the discrimination bullet, claiming security software malfunctions, according to a report by Tom Foremski in the Silicon Valley Watcher:

. . . the problem of access had been going on since late February. It had something to do with the security software that Cox isusing from a company called Authentium. Cox has been collaborating with Authentium since April 2005 to develop the security software suite.

Back on February 23rd Authentium acknowledged that their software is blocking Craigslist but it still hasn’t fixed the problem, more than three months later. That’s a heck of long time to delete some text from their blacklist. And this company also supplies security software to other large ISPs.

Craigslist has approached Authentium several times to get it to stop blocking access by Cox internet users but it has been unresponsive. Jim [Buckmaster, the CEO of Craigslist] wasn’t aware that Cox had its own classified ads service. “That changes things, ” he said.

A similar occurrence flared up just two weeks ago when MySpace users across Florida and Tennessee claimed that BellSouth was blocking access to the community Web portal.

These are exactly the kinds of scenarios that many people engaged in the Net Neutrality debate are concerned about, Foremski writes. “[T]hat the cable companies and the telcos will make it difficult for their internet users to access competing services.”

According to Craigslist program reports, customers have been experiencing suspicious ISP blockages for some time.

But a report in today’s Wall Street Journal downplays these concerns, quoting Cox spokesman David Grabert: “We don’t block or otherwise impede access to any legal Web site… Unfortunately, a few customers who experienced this difficulty drew the wrong conclusions about what was happening.”

If that’s the case, then, why has it taken Cox and their vendors three months to fix a known problem involving a competitive business?

The CEO at the “security software” company in question is equally opaque about the Craigslist blocking. Here’s his exchange with David Utter of WebPoNews.

Without net neutrality protections, the cable and telecom duopoly will have no incentive to give customers the choices they expect online, Stoller writes. “Already, it’s quite difficult to even know that this is happening because they are quite easy to disguise.”

Our real grassroots Coalition called today on Senators to heed growing public outcry for Net Neutrality as we delivered more than 1 million petitions and letters from average Americans to Capitol Hill.

During the event we urged Congress to protect Net Neutrality and stand firm against efforts by phone and cable companies to control the Internet.Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) joined us to call on their colleagues to support the “Internet Freedom and Preservation Act” (S. 2917), a bipartisan bill that would bar companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from blocking, degrading or interfering with content or services on the Internet. Here are some of the comments from the event:

Senator Olympia Snowe

“The idea that brings us together is a free and unfettered Internet. It’s vital we preserve, not undermine, the extraordinarily democratic technological network - over which content providers from the largest corporations in the biggest cities in the world to single individuals in rural towns have equal opportunity to reach millions of Internet users.”

Senator Byron Dorgan

“It’s essential that we preserve Internet freedom. The open architecture which now exists, and which allows everyone fair access to any site on the Internet, without gatekeepers, must be preserved. That is what our bill would do - preserve Internet freedom, which is at the very core of what makes the Internet so important, and something that enriches the lives of millions of Americans.”

The million petition signatures and letters were collected via the SavetheInternet.com Coalition Web site and by members of the coalition, including Free Press, MoveOn.org Civic Action, Common Cause, Consumers Union, True Majority and Working Assets. Spokes people from MoveOn and the Christian Coalition of America were at the press event. Here are some of their comments:

Joan Blades of Moveon

“Net Neutrality has allowed the Internet to become the new public square, where everyday people can participate in our democracy and have their voices heard. We cannot let the Internet gatekeepers decide who gets into the public square — everyone from MoveOn to the Christian Coalition should get in, so the best ideas can thrive based on their merit. The SavetheInternet.com Coalition will intensify our grassroots pressure on the Senate to assure that Internet freedom is preserved and Net Neutrality remains the law of the land.”

Michele Combs of the Christian Coalition of America

“We’re 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 the Senate to move aggressively to save the Internet and allow ideas to thrive on the World Wide Web, and we will do our part to make certain our supporters get that message.”

More than 1 million Americans are speaking out on behalf of Internet freedom. Yet Congress still could cave to corporate pressure by rewriting laws and handing over control of the Internet to corporations like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. The Senate must step in to defend the Internet from gatekeepers who plan to tax innovation and throttle the free market.

Let’s keep the heat on. The Senate can not simply sell out the public and let AT&T, Verizon and Comcast turn our Internet into their private domain.

Watch this space for videos of the event.

Mark Cooper, Director of Research for the Consumer Federation of America guest-blogs with the following response to the Washington Post’s fact-challenged Monday editorial:

In a June 12 editorial titled “The Internet’s Future: Congress Should Stay Out of Cyberspace,” the Washington Post regurgitated the cable and telephone companies’ spin on Network Neutrality, cautioning that Internet freedom supporters want to “burden the Internet with preemptive regulation.”

This statement is wrong as historical fact and public policy. Network Neutrality has existed throughout the history of the Internet and created the most dynamic environment for innovation and competition the nation has seen in generations. Good government policy decisions created an open, neutral communications platform over the objections of the telephone companies. It is the opponents of Network Neutrality who would burden the Internet with network discrimination.

The Post brushed aside concerns about network discrimination with statements like “the Internet will always be relatively democratic” and “the extra barriers to entry would probably be small because the pipe owners know that consumers want access to innovators.” Network discrimination alters the fundamentally open architecture of the Internet and forces innovators to negotiate with network operators before they can get into business – ending the era of “innovation without permission,” as Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet calls it. The implications of the loss of Network Neutrality deserve more careful consideration than the Post’s platitudes and weak assurances.

The Post also repeated telephone and cable company claims that “the weakest aspect of the Network Neutrality case is that the dangers it alleges are speculative.” The concerns about discrimination are far from speculative; the Post simply has not or does not care to look at what network operators have been doing and saying they plan to do.

Cable operators, who were excused from Network Neutrality by the Federal Communications Commission, force consumers to pay twice if they want a different Internet service provider than the one they provide. They discriminate against Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) providers in quality of service (Comcast refuses to guarantee the same quality of service to unaffiliated VOIP providers), against content (Time Warner blocked letters to subscribers of its AOL subsidiary with which it disagrees) and against applications (Cox is blocking craigslist while it promotes its own classified advertising Web site).

For years, the FCC let the telephone companies force consumers to pay twice if they wanted VOIP from an unaffiliated provider (i.e. they refused to sell “naked” DSL). Even when the practice was banned as a merger condition, the companies continued to make it difficult for competitors. When the North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked competing services, the FCC made them stop but then repealed its own authority to prevent blocking in the future by reclassifying broadband access as an information service. The telephone companies have been the most aggressive in demanding the right to make exclusive deals. And we cannot overlook the brutal campaign of foreclosure and discrimination they conducted against the Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) after the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Thousands of ISPs, who were strangled by the network operator policy of forcing consumers to pay twice, and hundreds of CLECs who lost tens of billions of dollars without ever gaining access to the telecommunications network are evidence enough that network operators will not hesitate to abuse their market power. This anti-consumer, anti-competitive discrimination took place while its legality was being challenged. If discrimination becomes legal, it is likely to get much worse.

Even more ominous is the fact that consultants funded by the cable and telephone companies have already begun a drumbeat to get rid of the open protocol altogether. This is an attempt to return the nation to the pre-Internet environment of proprietary communications networks that may or may not interoperate at the discretion of the operator, an environment in which network operators have much greater leverage.

The Post editorial tells us not to worry about discrimination because “more than 60 percent of the Zip codes in the United States are served by four or more broadband providers that compete to give consumers what they want.” This Zip code data has been criticized extensively by the GAO. A single customer in a Zip code tells us little about the actual nature of competition. And the FCC definition of broadband — 200 kilobits in one direction — is a ridiculously low speed compared to what high-speed Internet access actually is.

More importantly, in the economic analysis of market structure and industrial organization, markets with the equivalent of fewer than 10 equal-sized firms are considered concentrated by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Markets with fewer than six are considered highly concentrated. Four very unequal-sized competitors do not represent sufficient competition to prevent anti-competitive and anti-consumer abuses.

Yet 98 percent of high speed Internet subscribers use either the telephone network or the cable modem service. Their market share has been rising, not falling, and as broadband becomes even higher speed, the chances that there will be more than two full service broadband platforms decreases. A duopoly is not enough for to ensure vigorous competition. The cozy duopoly will not compete on price and will spend more time protecting franchise services than innovating. This is why U.S. prices are so high and the take rate of high-speed Internet is so low compared to the rest of the world.

The Post editorial laments “the fact that the U.S. broadband infrastructure lags behind that of East Asia and Europe.” It advocates network discrimination as the solution, but it fails to note that those nations did not get ahead by allowing network discrimination. On the contrary, the nations who have surpassed us have done so because they adopted national policies to promote broadband deployment and forced the network operators to run neutral networks, relying on competition for services, unimpeded by network gatekeepers and toll collectors, to drive adoption.

The magnificent success of Network Neutrality in providing innovative, competitive environments in other nations, the track record of past abuses of market power by U.S. network operators in the U.S., and the loud declarations of intent to discriminate in the future make it clear that the advocates of network discrimination have it backwards. Network Neutrality is a proven, successful reality; network discrimination is a hypothesis, a theory in search of support that does not exist, which will impose a severe burden on the Internet. If Congress does not step in to restore Network Neutrality, tollbooths will raise consumer costs and gatekeepers will slow innovation, destroying the fundamental character and architecture of the Internet.

For more details see Coopers report, ECONOMIC ANALYSIS AND NETWORK NEUTRALITY: SEPARATING EMPIRICAL FACTS FROM THEORETICAL FICTION

An alliance of singer-songwriters has come together to urge fans to take action before Congress scraps Net Neutrality and harms independent music.

Led by independent singer-songwriters Jill Sobule, Kay Hanley (founder of the band Letters to Cleo) and Michelle Lewis the musical alliance seeks to show the importance of Internet freedom to new and independent artists. The trio’s new group — dubbed “The Broadband” — today released a new song with the SavetheInternet.com Coalition to promote “Net Neutrality” and rally people to contact Congress before it hands over control of the Internet to the nations largest phone and cable companies.

Their song, “God Save the Internet,” can be downloaded for free exclusively at www.SavetheInternet.com/broadband

“While ‘God Save the Internet’ is tongue-in-cheek, it’s scary because it’s true,” said Jill Sobule. “The telecommunications industry is really trying to destroy our Internet. Take action now while you still can.”

“The idea that the citizens of the world are somehow squatting on the telecom giants’ pipes is ludicrous,” said Kay Hanley, founder of the alternative rock band Letters to Cleo. “I found out what these guys were up to, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved. This is a fight for our generation, if ever there was one.”

Special thanks to SavetheInternet.com Coalition member Scott Goodstein for his work with the musical community on this. To listen to “God Save the Internet” or learn more about how Network Neutrality affects artists and musicians, visit www.savetheinternet.com/broadband

Also check out the article written by SavetheInternet.com Coalition partners Jenny Toomey and Michael Bracy From the Future of Music Coalition.

Our partners at the Future of Music Coalition have written an editorial for The Hill that champions Net Neutrality from the perspective of independent music makers and producers.

“While many argue the Internet has had a negative impact on traditional record sales, it has also helped artists to tear down the walls between themselves and their fans and created the foundation for an unparalleled musician-powered renaissance, Jenny and Michael write. They add that this technology has allowed musicians to overcome a recording label system that allows only the most mainstream acts to rise to the top. According to Toomey and Bracy:

“For musicians, net neutrality means they should have the unfettered ability to make their work available to potential fans without undue interference from corporate gatekeepers. Similarly, music fans should have the ability to access this music via a range of legitimate business models. Net neutrality also ensures the continued innovation that has spurred the growth of the indie sector, the transition to a legitimate digital economy and, more widely, consumer adaptation of broadband services.

“To understand the importance of net neutrality for artists, look at the lack of a similar principle in modern commercial radio. When informally polled as to why they sign away their copyrights to major labels, most artists explain that they need to be on a major label in order to have a shot at commercial radio airplay. And, sadly, these artists have a point.”

Toomey and Bracy ask a series of poignant questions to draw a chilling parallel between the corruption of commercial radio by major broadcast companies and plans by corporations such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast to seize control of the Internet:

“What would happen if Sony paid Comcast so that sonymusic.com would run faster than iTunes or, more important, faster than cdbaby.com (where over 135,000 indie artists sell their music)? Would a new form of Internet payola emerge, with large Internet content providers striking business deals with the dominant Internet service providers? How would that affect indie artists? Would it shut down the burgeoning new economy and replace it with one that looks a lot like our closed media market?

“The large broadband providers insist these concerns are based in paranoid fantasy. What they have to realize, and what Congress has to address, is that the connection between radio consolidation, payola and these debates is real. With the passage of the Telecommunications Act in 1996, Congress essentially handed the radio industry over to huge corporations focused solely on the bottom line, with particularly devastating results for local music communities across the country. Now some of the same congressional leaders who oppose strong network-neutrality provisions are also calling on the FCC to lift local radio-ownership caps, which would allow Clear Channel and others to purchase even more stations.”

Toomey and Bracy call upon Congress to expressly state the principle of net neutrality. “[A]nything short of that will simply lead to a de facto form of Internet payola.”

“Musicians are not spoiling for a fight. But they are not afraid of one. Radio taught us what it was like to live in a world controlled by payola. We will never trade the emerging promise of the open Internet for one that is narrowed by Internet payola.”

The likely harm to consumers and the Internet economy if Congress abandons “Network Neutrality” will be substantial, according to a new economic analysis released today by Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America and Free Press.

The report rebuts the claims of Net Neutrality opponents such as Vanderbilt University Law Professor Christopher S. Yoo and the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies. It disputes their facts and concludes that the consumer benefits claimed for abandoning this principle of open communications are non-existent.

“The proponents of network discrimination get the policy problem exactly backward,” said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America. “They say we should not risk imposing Network Neutrality for fear of stifling competition and innovation. Yet it is Network Neutrality that has given us vibrant competition and innovation. The question Congress should be asking is why abandon network neutrality and risk destroying the Internet?”

“Since network neutrality has succeeded so dramatically in producing the vibrant Internet economy and sustaining competitive communications services,” said Trevor Roycroft, the economist who authored the report, “critics must show very tangible benefits from changing that policy.”

The report argues that Yoo and the Phoenix Center have reached conclusions based on faulty assumptions that do not fit the realities of the Internet marketplace.

At the foundation of the debate is a dispute as to whether or not the telephone and cable companies that control last-mile broadband access should be allowed to “differentiate their product.” Network differentiation is code for strategic manipulation of technology that will enable discrimination “that adversely affects the utilization and production of Internet content,services, and applications,” the report argues.

The report gives ample evidence that a policy of content discrimination will result in “a patently inferior outcome that will favor incumbent last-mile broadband providers to the detriment of consumers and Internet innovators.” Companies like AT&T, Veizon and Comcast currently possess enough market power and dominance to turn the open Internet into their private domains, which would “undermine the vibrant competition and rapid innovation in the provision of Internet content, applications and services, which has characterized the Internet since its privatization in 1995.”

Net Neutrality is the safeguard that preserves competition and innovation and not the alternative. The three groups submitted the report to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in advance of its latest hearing on major telecommunications legislation.

The editorial writers at the Washington Post have built their Monday back-pager on a foundation of sand. In 800 words, they level an argument against Net Neutrality that uses meaningless data to paint a picture of robust competition in America’s broadband market.

Nothing could be less true. 

The broadband ISP owners at the Washington Post (the Washinton Post Company owns Cable One, which provides internet, and cable modem services in midwestern, western, and southern states) want you to believe that consumers will simply take their business elsewhere when an existing provider blocks or slows content. The Post’s editors write:

“The market for Internet connections, unlike that for cable television, is competitive: More than 60 percent of Zip codes in the United States are served by four or more broadband providers that compete to give consumers what they want — fast access to the full range of Web sites . . . If one broadband provider slowed access to fringe bloggers, the blogosphere would rise up in protest — and the provider would lose customers.”

They claim that competition in the broadband market will deter bad behavior by the likes of AT&T and Cable One. If these ISPs fiddled with content, customers would decamp in droves to a competing service. 

If only this were true.

For customers to leave, they have to have somewhere else to go. But such choice doesn’t exist and won’t anytime in the foreseeable future.

The Post cites Federal Communications Commission data that “more than 60 percent of Zip codes in the United States are served by four or more broadband providers.” But the FCC itself warns that Zip-code information is not meant to be a measure of broadband deployment. The statistic quoted by the Post simply indicates that at least one broadband subscriber resides in a given Zip code, meaning that in 60 percent of the nations’ Zip codes, there are four broadband providers with at least one customer. The Post is implying that this statistic means that the broadband market is competitive, when in fact it is not.

A recent study by the Government Accountability Office confirms that the Zip-code metric is useless when measuring broadband deployment and competition. The GAO found that the median number of providers available to a given household is just two.

That’s right. Most Americans have access to two or less broadband providers. That’s all. Cable and DSL systems dominate, holding more than 98 percent of the broadband market. A significant chunk of the country has only one broadband provider available, and around 10 percent of households have none at all. (For more, read the Free Press, Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America report “Broadband Reality Check“)

Ours is hardly a competitive market. In fact, the share of the U.S. market held by all the other broadband technologies combined — satellite, fixed wireless, mobile wireless, and broadband over power lines — actually decreased over the past few years, according the FCC.

There simply is not enough competition between different technologies to produce any kind of deterrent to discrimination. Without Net Neutrality, the telephone and cable duopoly will leverage its market power over the network to gain control over the content and application markets, establishing a handful of giant companies as the gatekeepers of the Internet.

The consumer is trapped when both local cable and telephone companies use their networks to discriminate. And the executives of the largest of these firms have stated their intentions to do so.

So, where else is there to go?

The Post editors got it wrong. Coincidentally, it’s an error that serves their parent company well.

– ALSO: David Isenberg’s dismantling of the Post and Jeffrey Chester’s at the Center for Digital Democracy.

Last night’s House vote against an amendment that would make Net Neutrality enforceable is the result of swarming lobbyists and a multi-million-dollar media campaign by telephone companies that want Congress to hand them control of the Internet.

The fight now moves to the Senate, where there is stronger bi-partisan support for a bill — put forth by Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota) — that would protect our Internet freedom from AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.

Here are some comments from SavetheInternet.com Coalition members.

Jeannine Kenney, senior policy analyst of the Consumers Union:

Special interest advocates from telephone and cable companies have flooded the Congress with misinformation delivered by an army of lobbyists to undermine decades-long federal practice of prohibiting network owners from discriminating against competitors to shut out competition. Unless the Senate steps in, today’s vote marks the beginning of the end of the Internet as an engine of new competition, entrepreneurship and innovation.

Ben Scott, policty director of Free Press:

The American public favors an open and neutral Internet and does not want gatekeepers taxing innovation and throttling the free market. The House has seriously undermined access to information and democratic communication. Despite the revisionist history propagated by the telcos and their lobbyists, until last year, the Internet had always been a neutral network. It is the central reason for its overwhelming success. This issue is not about whether or not the government will regulate the Internet. It’s about whether consumers or cable and phone companies will decide what services and content are available on the Net.

Mark Cooper, director of research at Consumers Federation of America:

This is not Google vs. AT&T. CFA has been battling to keep the phone companies from putting tollbooths on the Internet since the early 1980’s, but now every business and every consumer that uses the Internet has a dog in the fight for Internet Freedom. This coalition will continue to grow, millions of Americans will add their voices, and Congress will not escape the roar of public opinion until Congress passes enforceable net neutrality.

Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge:

The House has rushed to pass HR 5252 at the urging of the telephone and cable companies, who feared the growing public support for an enforceable net neutrality law…. Today’s Internet, which gives consumers control over what applications, services and content they want to access, will be replaced by an Internet that looks like a cable system — where network providers determine who gets on and at what price.

Our grass-roots coalition includes more than 720 groups, 5,000 bloggers and 800,000 individuals who have rallied in support of net neutrality at www.savetheinternet.com. The coalition is left and right, public and private, commercial and noncommercial.

Supporters of net neutrality include the Christian Coalition of America, MoveOn.org, National Religious Broadcasters, the Service Employees International Union, the American Library Association, AARP, ACLU, and every major consumer group in the nation. It includes the founders of the Internet and hundreds of companies that do business online.

The battle for Net Neutrality - or Internet freedom - has significantly stronger bipartisan support in the Senate. Senators Snowe (R-Maine) and Dorgan (D-N.D.) have introduced the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2006″ that enjoys the strong support from the SaveTheInternet coalition.

Bi-partisanship will carry the day. A bi-partisan Net Neutrality bill in the House Judiciary won handily only two weeks ago. As we look to the Senate, our prospects are strong.

Senators can expect to hear from their constituents on their responsibility to protect Net Neutrality and we will be watching closely to make sure they listen.

Following the passage of the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act, Free Press cofounder Robert W. McChesney issued the following statement on behalf of the www.savetheinternet.com coalition:

Passage of major telecom legislation without enforceable Net Neutrality is a low point in the history of US policymaking. The telephone-cable Internet duopoly providers deluged Congress with an army of lobbyists, countless millions spent on misleading PR spin and outright lies, and a single-minded determination to put their bottom line ahead of the democratic principles of an open, neutral Internet.

If we lose Net Neutrality, we lose the most promising method for regular people to access and provide diverse and independent news, information and entertainment. We will see the Internet become like cable TV: a handful of massive companies will decide what you can see and how much it will cost. Gone will be the entrepreneurship and innovation that has made the Internet the most important cultural and economic engine of our times.

The Senate cannot ignore the massive right-left coalition of Americans that have unified behind Net Neutrality: over 750,000 individuals, nearly every consumer group, the Internet’s founders, and a rapidly growing coalition of nearly every industry that relies on the Internet.

In the past two months, Net Neutrality has gone from little-known tech jargon to the most contentious issue in the COPE Act. The hundreds of thousands of Americans who signed the SaveTheInternet.com petition, added the coalition to their MySpace accounts, voted pro-net neutrality videos to the front page of YouTube.com and called their Members of Congress represent the tweak of the tiger’s tail.

The House vote is a pyrrhic victory for the telecom lobby. Momentum to defend Net Neutrality will only grow as Americans realize that the threat to internet freedom is real. Senators can expect to hear their constituents loud and clear on their responsibility to protect Net Neutrality and we will be watching closely to make sure they listen.

We’ll have more details soon. In the meantime, you can read the coalition’s statement on the vote.

Just in time for the upcoming House vote on Net Neutrality, the Washington Post has printed a no-nonsense op-ed by SavetheInternet.com charter members Lawrence Lessig and Robert McChesney.

The message of “No Tolls on the Internet” is clear: Congress can not ignore the public outcry and vote to hand control of the Internet to the cable and telephone cartel.

Here’s what Lessig of Stanford Law School and McChesney of Free Press had to say:

The protections that guaranteed network neutrality have been law since the birth of the Internet — right up until last year, when the Federal Communications Commission eliminated the rules that kept cable and phone companies from discriminating against content providers. This triggered a wave of announcements from phone company chief executives that they plan to do exactly that.

Now Congress faces a legislative decision. Will we reinstate net neutrality and keep the Internet free? Or will we let it die at the hands of network owners itching to become content gatekeepers? The implications of permanently losing network neutrality could not be more serious. The current legislation, backed by companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, would allow the firms to create different tiers of online service. They would be able to sell access to the express lane to deep-pocketed corporations and relegate everyone else to the digital equivalent of a winding dirt road. Worse still, these gatekeepers would determine who gets premium treatment and who doesn’t.

Their idea is to stand between the content provider and the consumer, demanding a toll to guarantee quality delivery. It’s what Timothy Wu, an Internet policy expert at Columbia University, calls “the Tony Soprano business model”: By extorting protection money from every Web site — from the smallest blogger to Google — network owners would earn huge profits. Meanwhile, they could slow or even block the Web sites and services of their competitors or those who refuse to pay up. They’d like Congress to “trust them” to behave.

Evidence that telephone companies are trustworthy is in extremely short supply, as SavetheInternet.com members Free Press, Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America noted in our “Facts vs. Fictions” report to Congress two weeks ago.

Lessig and McChesney compare AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth’s plans to the cable-ization of the Web:

Without net neutrality, the Internet would start to look like cable TV. A handful of massive companies would control access and distribution of content, deciding what you get to see and how much it costs. Major industries such as health care, finance, retailing and gambling would face huge tariffs for fast, secure Internet use — all subject to discriminatory and exclusive dealmaking with telephone and cable giants.

And they also offset the faux-organizing of deceptive industry front groups against the genuine grassroots efforts of our coalition:

The smell of windfall profits is in the air in Washington. The phone companies are pulling out all the stops to legislate themselves monopoly power. They’re spending tens of millions of dollars on inside-the-Beltway print, radio and TV ads; high-priced lobbyists; coin-operated think tanks; and sham “Astroturf” groups — fake grass-roots operations with such Orwellian names as Hands Off the Internet and NetCompetition.org.

They’re opposed by a real grass-roots coalition of more than 700 groups, 5,000 bloggers and 750,000 individual Americans who have rallied in support of net neutrality at http://www.savetheinternet.com/ . The coalition is left and right, commercial and noncommercial, public and private. Supporters include the Christian Coalition of America, MoveOn.org, National Religious Broadcasters, the Service Employees International Union, the American Library Association, AARP and nearly every consumer group. It includes the founders of the Internet, the brand names of Silicon Valley, and a bloc of retailers, innovators and entrepreneurs. Coalitions of such breadth, depth and purpose are rare in contemporary politics.

Other major national dailies — including the New York Times (twice), San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times and Houston Chronicle — have come out in support of enforceable Net Neutrality legislation.

The Post column sounds a call to our elected representatives. It’s time they woke up to the public outcry and made the right decision for the future of the Internet.

Call your representative today.

Read Lessig and McChesney’s full piece.