Thanks!

In his “Media Minutes” radio report, John Anderson hails our grassroots mobilization for “making a difference in Washington”:

A broad and deep coalition banded together to pound Capitol Hill with a call to preserve the principle of network neutrality for the internet. It began with some 50 diverse organizations. That number has since multiplied eight-fold. More than 2,000 bloggers took up the call and more than a half million people have signed on to a petition supporting net neutrality safeguards.

Anderson mentions the astroturf frontmen and their telco bosses who are spending nearly a million dollars a week running television advertisements in Washington DC, which attempt to paint AT&T’s drive to kill off an open Internet as “Good for America.”

But the politicians are waking up to the public outcry, Anderson continues: “At least two bills are now circulating… that would prohibit data discrimination.”

Listen in to John’s full report.

“The Internet has revolutionized the way Americans communicate with one another and do business,” writes Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren. “It’s just common sense to keep that revolution where it belongs–in the hands of ordinary individuals, instead of a handful of big corporations.”

In a CNet News op-ed, the California Representative chides the House Commerce Committee, which “passed up its chance to keep the Internet open,” and calls on every elected official to stand firm against the telephone-cable cartel:

The latest chapter in that attack on freedom is the fight against network neutrality. For most Americans, our options for broadband Internet come down to two choices–a phone company or a cable company. Instead of continuing our freedom to use those connections with whatever content, devices and services we want, some corporations want to control what we access over the Internet. This would include giving better connections to their favored content, and charging money for that privilege.

What would the world look like if the Internet had been controlled in this way a few years ago? Imagine if the students who created Google or Yahoo had been charged a fee by a phone company for the privilege of letting their potential users have fast access. These small projects would not have turned into big ideas that revolutionized the World Wide Web. The proposed control of content goes directly against the level playing field created by Internet technology. The concept of freedom written about by Thomas Paine is being challenged by this threat to net neutrality.

If Thomas Paine were alive today, Lofgren adds, he would “write a blog about the need to protect Internet independence that would reach across the world.” By this morning’s count, more than 2,500 blogs are carrying the torch handed down by this founding revolutionary — linking to SavetheInternet.com and spreading the grassroots fire.

Click here, to get your blog involved.

You know that an issue has spread to the mainstream when your mom leaves a message on your answering machine telling you to go to SavetheInternet.com, immediately.

This weekend saw a flurry of blog posts about Internet freedom and net neutrality as this issue crossed over from the blogosphere to Main Street.

Here’s a sampling:

The Cost in Human Terms (Russell Shaw at IP Telephony)

When your mother leaves you a message, in the same tone that she leaves you a message to remember to buy sunscreen with UVA and UVB protection, that you might want to keep your eye on legislation challenging network neutrality and to go to savetheinternet.com and publicknowledge.com, you know it’s serious.

Open Source in the Political Fray (Dana Blankenhorn at Open Source)

…sites like DailyKos, Eschaton, MyDD (one example here) and (most interesting) Moveon.org have been loudest and longest on this, and their readers have responded by peppering relevant Congressional offices. I would love to see examples from FreeRepublic, RedState or Lucianne of bloggers flogging their friends to keep access to their sites free and open.

The Entire U.S Wants Net Neutrality (Doug Ross at DirectorBlue)

Ever wonder why the telcos spend so much on lobbyists rather than, oh I don’t know, value-creating new applications like Skype and Vonage? For the love of… And don’t think for a second that killing net neutrality isn’t a huge issue. It has already happened in Canada and the results weren’t pretty.

Save the Internet (Balo’s Life Blog)

Net Neutrality is, to borrow a phrase from savetheinternet.com, “The First Amendment” of the Internet, ensuring that giant companies like AT&T and Verizon can’t restrict your access to some websites. Without this, any sites they don’t like will load slower, or not at all. Therefore, this would end the Internet as we know it, changing the greatest free speech mechanism the world has ever seen into little more than a corporate pigsty.

Support the Markey Amendment (David Isenberg at isen.blog)

Here comes a BAD LAW and you can oppose it, maybe even make it better. You want the Internet to be 57 Billion URLs with Nothing On? OK, then act.

Internet (As We Know It) in Peril (CS at Mentalwire)

The good news in all of this is that civic action has brought this issue to the forefront, and I am proud to say that my representative - Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), voted in favor of net neutrality. Thanks Mrs. Shakowsky! You are an inspiration to the democratic process.

Right Wing Nut House is blogging about net neutrality, as are dedicated conservatives Kitty Litter, the Absurd Report, and Freedom Watch. And SavetheInternet was the Web Site of the Day on Right Wing News.

I’ve been adding supporting blogs to our blogroll furiously, as you can see on the right. Filmmaker magazine, DeafDC, the Asian-Pacific Islander Blog Network and Business Analysis Insight are some of the new sites on there. And we’re up to 1300 friends on MySpace.

Meanwhile, Robert Bennett calls our network neutrality amendment ‘fascist’ and lauds sell-out Charlie Gonzales for ‘fighting fascism’. I’m confused. I thought we were left-wing communists.

As of this morning, more than 1,500 blogs have taken up the cause, posting links to SavetheInternet.com or urging their readers to take action by calling on members of Congress to stand firm in defense of Internet freedom. And the Hill is hearing it.

“We would not have turned the corner in this fight without your blogs, your voices,” Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass) said yesterday during a teleconference with a handful of bloggers. “We need to put every member of Congress on record on where they stand on the future of the Internet,” Markey said. That momentum has shifted in Congress, “is a reflection of the rumbling in cyberspace about what’s going on with this bill.”

Markey is now rallying colleagues on the left and the right to support the introduction of his Network Neutrality Amendment onto the full floor next week.

But it’s an uphill battle. For the amendment to be voted upon by all members, it has to first get approval from the gatekeepers at the House Rules Committee — which Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi calls “the free world’s outstanding bureaucratic abomination — a tiny, airless closet deep in the labyrinth of the Capitol where some of the very meanest people on earth spend their days cleaning democracy like a fish.”

This 13 member committee (nine Republicans; four Democrats) holds Congress in its grip. If the Rules Committee votes down your amendment, your amendment is DOA.

Bloggers are banding together to ensure that no member of Congress gets off the hook that easily.

“There’s a white hot firestorm on the issue on Capitol Hill,” Matt Stoller said in a post at MyDD. “No one wants to see the telcos make a radical change to the Internet and screw this medium up, except, well, the telcos.”

Politicians get scared when they realize the public is paying attention. As the blogosphere catches fire, momentum is shifting for our cause. Whereas before, the big telephone companies and their coin-opertaed lobbyists were confident that Congress would simply roll over, today, no member of Congress can vote with the telecom cartel without suffering repercussions.

The public is now watching and we will not stand for any law that threatens Internet freedom. (…read the full story)

The blogoshere has lit up with news of the launch of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition. Here’s a sampling of the more than 135 postings that mention or link to the campaign:

Nero’s Fiddle:

When you can get Glenn Reynolds and MoveOn.org to unite in common cause, you figure it’s got to be a slam-dunk issue. And this one is. With almost no noise in the media, the government is mulling ceding control of the Internet to the major ISPs, allowing them to selectively throttle bandwidth or block sites and services as they see fit.

David Weinberger at Joho the Blog:

Remember when democracy had something to do with all people being equal? With ensuring that our institutions don’t get too powerful? Net neutrality has made the Internet a great equalizer, not just for Americans but for voices around the world.

Boztopia:

I hope you take the time to read through this and contact the people who represent you. It doesn’t matter what your politics are, what you use the Web for, or what you think about regulation. This is about ensuring the Web continues to remain free . . .

BlueMeme

The owners of the pipes make it sound as if supply is tight, and price discrimination is the answer. But (a) there is still plenty of unused bandwidth out there (which is why prices are falling) and (b) the very idea of price discrimination in an environment where both buyers (that’s us) and sellers are both paying to hook up to the Web is, well insane.

Kiersten Marek at Kmareka.com:

This is a cause that we little websites need to be on board with: net neutrality. Without it, the big-money players on the internet could easily squeeze out access to little websites like this one.

Clif Taylor at Cuddlefish:

Without net neutrality, decisions now made collectively by millions of users will be made in corporate boardrooms. The choice we face now is whether people can choose the content and services they want, or whether the broadband barons will choose for them.

Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine:

The age of business models built on scarcity and on keeping your customers from doing what they want to do is over.

Bobby Foley:

“This is a call for support from Internet users of every demographic. This will affect everyone, and right now the issue is a quiet one being discussed in Washington . . .

I Hate Peas:

This is a huge issue, and without public outcry, I am truly worried that Congress will give in to big business over the public good. . . Find the members of the Save The Internet coalition here. There’s some folks I really respect on it, and some folks I generally have no use for, but hey, this is something we can all agree on. . .