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.

Can a groundswell of popular support for network neutrality save free speech online? Radio show “Media Minutes” asks whether the SavetheInternet coalition has the momentum to turn public opinion against AT&T and their coin-operated front men in Washington.

Listen to the show.

Gun Owners of America’s Craig Fields puts it best:

“In a very, very strange situation, what we have is the necessity of government intervention to ensure a free marketplace of ideas. Whenever you see people from the far left and the far right joining together about something that Congress is getting ready to do, it’s been my experience that what Congress is getting ready to do is basically un-American.”

Columbia Professor Timothy Wu gives an historical perspective by comparing AT&T’s net control scheme to the AP’s 19th century news monopoly, calling it “a threat not only to American business and competition but a threat to American democracy.”

The loss of network neutrality will smother the innovative nature of the Internet, which has made it such a powerful economic and social engine. Warns Professor Wu:

“It’s no longer survival of the fittest. It’s no longer who has the best technology. It’s a question of who goes golfing with the CEO of AT&T. And I think that’s not the American way.”

Indeed, which helps explain the left-right cyberstorm over this issue. Listen in.

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.

Earlier today I set up a page on MySpace for Save the Internet. There are now 400 friends on the MySpace profile, including the well-regarded IPTV broadcast Ask A Ninja. The Internet is very well-liked.

In related news, Alex Curtis’s video on net neutrality has been seen over 8000 times.

I’ve never seen a pickup like this on a cause, and we haven’t even officially announced. Congress is assuming that people don’t really care about telecom regulations. This is not true, we very much do care about the internet.

I hadn’t thought of it this way, but already this campaign is showing how the telcos vision of a gated community is far inferior in quality, creativity, and speed of a free and open internet. For instance, no one told Alex to make the video; we didn’t collaborate on it, and he didn’t run it by anyone over here to see if it was good. He just made it, put it on YouTube, blogged it on the Public Knowledge site, and other people liked it and blogged it. No one forced anyone to watch the video, or send it to friends. It wasn’t astroturfed with millions of dollars of telecom money.

A free and open internet is just something people care about, precisely because it allows them to choose their own path, watch what they want, and learn what they want.