Thanks!

Eight months ago, very few of us had heard of Net Neutrality, and the SavetheInternet.com Coalition didn’t even exist. Now, not a day goes by without someone sending me a YouTube video, song, blog post or news clipping supporting Net Neutrality.

The SavetheInternet.com Coalition has enabled more than a million Americans to speak out on the issue, moving Net Neutrality to the forefront of the debate over the future of the Internet.

We have stunned the phone and cable lobby and scuttled its plan to strong-arm Congress and make AT&T and Comcast the ultimate gatekeepers to online content.

By stopping Senator Stevens’ massive handout to the network giants, we have opened a path to creating a more democratic broadband framework for 2007 and beyond.

Tom Morello at the 2003 Conference

You’re Invited

We’re now pleased to invite you to a blowout party to celebrate this historic accomplishment and begin the conversation on where we go from here.

On January 11 in Memphis, many of the more than 6,000 bloggers, YouTubers, Politicians, musicians, celebrities, activists and citizens who form the core of SavetheInternet.com Coalition will come together on the eve of the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis.

We’ve booked the Gibson Guitar Factory from 9 p.m. until closing. They’ll be a DJ, booze and dancing. We’ll be projecting dozens of videos created by YouTube activists throughout the year.

Internet for Everyone

During the party we will unveil SavetheInternet.com’s blueprint for the future of the Internet — a plan not just to secure Net Neutrality in the next Congress but also to build momentum behind a vision of a faster, more accessible broadband for everyone — returning our country to the digital forefront.

The party will help kick off the National Conference for Media Reform, which is about establishing media reform and Internet freedom as winnable political issues.

2005 Conference Workshop

Speakers on hand over the long weekend include Rev. Jesse Jackson, Bill Moyers, Arianna Huffington, M-1 from Dead Prez, Helen Thomas, Jane Fonda, Davey D, Robert Greenwald, Dan Gillmor, Paul Reickhoff, Matt Stoller, Amy Goodman, Cenk Ugyur and others.

Victory in 2007 and Beyond

SavetheInternet.com members will participate on panels and workshops on online organizing, blogger activism, Net Neutrality, the future of the Internet, and to meet face to face, strategize and build momentum for winning Net Neutrality as a new Congress returns to Washington.

Panel topics include:

• Going Viral — The power of social networks to make change and circumvent the mainstream media.
• SavetheInternet — The success of the campaign and the challenges ahead in 2007. (with Free Press)
• Universal Broadband — Making high-speed Internet available for all.
• Citizen Journalism — Blogs and beyond, making an impact in the new media landscape. (with Dan Gillmor)
• Media Reform and the Vote
• The Press at War and the War on the Press (with Helen Thomas)
• Trust or Verify — propaganda and the press
• Media Watchdogs – (with Media Matters)
• From Computer Screens to the Streets — activism in a wired world (with MoveOn)

Join us in Memphis. Celebrate the future of the Internet on Thursday and stay for a weekend of partying and plotting.

= = = =
Update: Bloggers can learn more about getting credentials for the weekend by clicking here.

In the coming weeks, major communications companies and their high-spending lobbyists will do everything they can to dismiss the Nov. 7 political result and re-assert their control over the business of policymaking.

But what happened that Tuesday has much deeper ramifications for phone and cable efforts to set the agenda.

In 2006, political corruption tipped over into public view.

It wasn’t just the glaring exposure of dirty-dealings by Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay and their cronies — but of the depths to which greed has become a part of the system. Abramoff was just one fellow traveler along a money trail that led from K Street to Capitol Hill and back again.

The revolving door of congressional staffers-cum-industry lobbyists is a part the same corruption of our democracy that has become loathsome to voters.

The phone and cable lobby is a major player in this scheme. In the past 10 years, telecommunications, broadcasting and cable companies have spent more than half a billion dollars on campaign contributions, political action committees, PR firms and high-spending lobbyists to push through self interested policies.

These regulations – offering massive tax breaks, relaxed ownership rules, and unfettered control of the public airwaves and broadband markets — all came at the public’s expense.

On the issue of Net Neutrality, companies like AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth and Comcast outspent public interest advocates on a scale of 500 to 1 – pushing Congress to remove the longstanding nondiscrimination rules that enabled the Internet to become the greatest vehicle for free speech and economic innovation.

To do away with these freedoms, the phone and cable lobby will continue to paint issues like Net Neutrality as “unnecessary government regulations” and dismiss the groundswell of public support for this issue as the handiwork of a few “liberal groups.”

The public tolerance for this type of “Astroturfing” was tested in 2006. More than 75 percent of respondents to a September CBS/New York Time poll thought that most members of Congress “are more interested in serving special interest groups” than “serving the people they represent.”

As much as anything, the election sent a message to Congress to stop currying favor with moneyed interests and return to governing in the public interest.

Near the top of this new agenda will be restoring Net Neutrality. Many in Congress came to this realization after receiving more than a million letters from concerned citizens urging them to maintain a free and open Internet.

Whereas before, the phone companies had been confident that Congress would simply sign-off on industry-written legislation. Now — as the 109th Congress comes to a close — no member can vote with the telecom cartel without feeling the full heat of public scrutiny.

The presidents of the nation’s two largest associations of minority journalists called on Congress to preserve Net Neutrality so that the Web can remain a haven for diversity, opportunity and free speech.

“The foundation of the Internet has been bought and paid for by the citizens of this country,” wrote Bryan Monroe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists and Rafael Olmeda, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. “Its access should not be auctioned off to the highest bidder.”

“We are troubled by efforts to control the flow of content over the Internet — to deny the public’s ability to receive news and information from a diversity of viewpoints by throttling back the speed of certain Web sites while accelerating others,” they wrote in a joint statement.

The two presidents lead associations that represent thousands of journalists across the United States. They said that among other things their support for Net Neutrality is out of concern about issues threatening the First Amendment as well as attacks against a free and open press:

The Internet is a great equalizer, providing an opportunity for the average citizen or small business, including media companies owned by blacks, Hispanics and other persons of color, to compete in the marketplace of ideas…

If Congress does not support Network Neutrality, the results will be devastating for free speech, for our society and for consumers. The Internet’s promise as the people’s communications medium will be jeopardized. The level playing field will be destroyed in the name of greed. This will reduce competition and the diversity of viewpoints that the public now enjoys.

Olmeda and Monroe said the proposal to “slow down the Internet for those who can’t — or won’t — pony up big bucks will be especially harmful to our communities,” who, they added, have been historically marginalized by mainstream media.

Our efforts to save the free and open Internet have been catapulted forward by The Nov. 7 election results. And the outlook for better, more public-spirited Internet legislation is now quite good.

Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) — both staunch supporters of Net Neutrality — is set to take command of telecommunications policy when their party reclaims majority power in the House in January.

According to a report in Broadcasting & Cable, Dingell said that he will take a new crack at a telecom reform bill, and that it would “clearly” have to better address Net Neutrality and the public interest in general. “Our duty is not just to the Bells, but to good public policy and to protecting the public interest,” he told reporters.

Dingell is expected to be seated as chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, the panel that oversees phone, cable operators and Internet companies.

Markey will take the helm of the key Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee. He has been an outspoken champion for Net Neutrality. New telecommunications legislation by Dingell and Markey in 2007 would likely include Net Neutrality mandates from the outset. Also in the House Net Neutrality column are Silicon Valley Democracts Anna Eshoo and Zoe Lofgren

The victory vindicates soon-to-be-majority leader Nancy Pelosi, who decided over the summer to elevate Net Neutrality in the Democratic Party platform — a risky move after many a Washington prognosticator declared it a dead issue. Not so.

In the Senate all pro-Net Neutrality Senators won decisive victories in their states. This list includes members of both parties:

>> Sen. Akaka won in Hawaii with 61%
>> Sen. Bingaman won in New Mexico with 70%
>> Sen. Cantwell won in Washington with 58%
>> Sen. Clinton won in New York with 67%
>> Sen. Feinstein won in California with 60%
>> Sen. Kennedy won in Massachussetts with 69%
>> Sen. Menendez won in New Jersey with 53%
>> Sen. Nelson won in Florida with 60%
>> Sen. Nelson won in Nebraska with 64%
>> Sen. Snowe won in Maine with 73%

They will be joined by newcomers Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Sherrod Brown, (D-Ohio), Jim Webb (D-Virginia) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) who have also come out in support of Net Neutrality.

Over the year, more and more politicians came to realize that the public was paying attention to this issue. The blogosphere caught fire and helped shift the momentum in Washington on this issue.

Whereas before, the big telephone companies and their coin-operated lobbyists were confident that Congress would simply roll over and do their bidding, today, no member of Congress can vote with the telecom cartel without full public scrutiny.

The major telecommunications bill pending in the Senate is a massive giveaway to the phone and cable companies, and should be blocked during the lame duck Congress. It’s time to start from scratch in 2007, and begin having a genuine public debate about what the future of the media and the Internet should look like.

Film and Internet auteur Arin Crumley has created a video that documents phone and cable company efforts to squash the democratic Internet.

With “Humanity Lobotomy,” Crumley’s covers the history of human communications in less than 12 minutes — culminating in the revolutionary development of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

“In this open platform growth was explosive,” Crumley says. This explosion is one of free speech and egalitarian innovation: the ability for all comers, all Web sites and blogs, to stand on equal footing with the largest corporate sites — for you to find your neighbor’s blog as easily as CNN.com.

The Internet to date has turned the top-down notion of mass media on its head returning the tools of communications to more and more people. But companies like AT&T and Comcast are now attempting to insert themselves as new gatekeepers of Internet content — much in the same ways that they gained control over television, radio and cable programming — by strongarming Congress to rewrite laws that would allow them to snub the public interest.

Crumley draws on televised segments from Bill Moyers PBS special “Net @ Risk” to lectures by Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig, Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and floor speeches by Congressman Ed Markey to show the extent to which this revolution is now endangered.

“They want the Internet to function much more like television,” Crumley says of the phone and cable company plan. We need to stop that from happening.

Crumley points to the SavetheInternet.com map as a good place to start speaking out.

As many here know, Microsoft is one of the big supporters of network neutrality and a member of the ItsOurNet coalition. ItsOurNet is the industry driven coalition with public interest members. That is different from the SavetheInternet.com Coalition, which is the public interest coalition with industry members.

Guest Blog by Harold Feld of Media Access Project Read the original post at Public Knowledge

And today, Microsoft demonstrated why the distinction is important. MS has taken a temporary hiatus from It’s Our Internet.

Why? Because It’s Our Internet filed comments with the FCC demanding a net neutrality condition in the proposed AT&T/BellSouth merger. MS has a corporate policy against opposing other people’s mergers — particularly mergers involving large potential customers.

MS is not unique in this. Many companies have such a policy. It’s why AT&T never said a word against Comcast and Time Warner’s acquisition of Adelphia cable, even though Comcast and Time Warner are AT&T’s chief competitors at the moment.

This is why, as I have said before, “you can’t outsource citizenship.” It is nice to have big companies like MS on our side, and I have no doubt they will get back in the NN game as soon as the AT&T/BS merger is over. But, at the end of the day, MS — like Google and Ebay and every other company supporting NN — does so to advance its corporate interests. That’s not a criticism. It’s a fact of life.

If you expect companies to save your bacon and defend your rights, think again. And if you expect the network neutrality movement to vanish if the telcos and tech cos manage to cut some kind of deal, think again. What has put Network Neutrality on the policy map has been people getting together and reminding their elected representatives that they work for us. And if we are going to win this fight in the long haul, we need to remember that.

So next time anyone says network neutrality is just a fight between the “extremely wealthy” and the “merely rich,” as a former FCC Chairman who should know better recently did, remember when Microsoft dropped out of the fight for a week and the rest of us kept going. I’ll be glad to see MS come back when it feels it is in its corporate interest to do so. In the meantime I, and any citizen that cares to join me and my friends, will keep fighting for the public interest.

If national polls are right, the upcoming midterm election could bring a dramatic shift of power on Capitol Hill. But that may not save us from a last-minute assault on Net Neutrality by members of the outgoing Congress.

The issue of Net Neutrality has become the most contentious piece of a massive telecommunications bill pending in the Senate.

At issue is whether giants like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon should treat all packets of Web information the same or whether they would be allowed to charge extra fees to guarantee that certain Web sites run faster than others.

These discriminatory tolls would have a chilling effect on the egalitarian Internet, by tilting the net’s historically level playing field to favor those companies that pay the most.

It’s a predatory scheme has little to do with the free market, It’s more like a mafia shake down, writes Columbia Professor Timothy Wu. “While it’s one way to earn cash, it’s just too close to the Tony Soprano vision of networking: Use your position to make threats and extract payments.”

In 2006, the nation’s largest phone and cable companies have spent more than $100 million on D.C. lobbyists, think tanks, ads and campaign contributions to strip Net Neutrality from the latest rewrite of the Telecommunications Act (H.R. 5252). But this legislation stalled in the Senate after more than a million people contacted Congress opposing its lack of safeguards.

Today, a grassroots movement that barely existed at the beginning the year is on the verge of toppling one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. But all that could change in the lame duck session.

Confronted with his failure to gain popular support for his telecom bill, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens is determined to force the bill to the floor after votes are counted on Nov. 7 — and before the next Congress convenes.

For more on the lame duck Congress visit www.lameduckhunt.org

If Stevens’ succeeds it would be an affront to the more than a million Americans who have spoken out in favor of Net Neutrality — and against plans by AT&T, Verizon and Comcast to seize control of the Internet.

The Savetheinternet.com Coalition is keeping a special eye on this lame duck session. But we need your help. You can:

• Visit our interactive Senate map to see where your senators stands;
• Sign the petition telling Congress to protect Net Neutrality;
• Write your hometown paper to tell others in your community about Net Neutrality.

Stevens and outgoing Senate Leader Bill Frist didn’t bring this bad bill to a vote before the elections because it was political dynamite. After Nov. 7, though, many are ready to deliver on promises to their high-spending friends in the telecom lobby. Americans need to stay on alert against any such lame duck maneuver.

It’s time for Congress to tear up this bad telecom bill and start over in 2007 with new legislation that protects Net Neutrality and the free and open Internet.