Saving the Internet: A History
The passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 set the stage for a battle for the future of the Internet. It’s one that pits consumers, Web innovators and open Internet advocates against the powerful phone and cable lobby. Roll over each event below to read the story. And help write the future by taking action now.
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1996 The Telecommunications Act
This update of the original 1934 Communications Act promised to bring the information revolution to the doorstep of every American. On signing the act, President Clinton declared that it would “protect consumers against monopolies,” and usher in an era of broadband competition where “you’ll be able to order up every movie ever produced or every symphony ever created in a minute’s time.” But before the ink was dry, powerful phone and cable lobbyists went to work to undermine the “open access” standard for Internet services that the new law was intended to establish.
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2002-2005 Broadband Reclassification
Under the Bush administration, the FCC tossed out open access requirements for high-speed Internet services. In 2002, the agency declared that high-speed cable Internet access would no longer be considered a telecommunications service that required openness protections, but rather an “information service” that did not. A Supreme Court decision in 2005 supported the FCC’s move. Soon thereafter, the FCC reclassified broadband delivered by the phone companies as an “information service,” too. These were radical policy shifts that went against the long-held assumption that nondiscriminatory communications were essential to economic growth, civic welfare and innovation.
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2005 Ed Whitacre’s “Shot Heard Around the Web”
In an interview with BusinessWeek, BellSouth CEO Ed Whitacre asked, “Why should [people] be allowed to use my pipes?” He said, “The Internet can't be free in that sense … for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes for free is nuts!” Whitacre’s stated intention to get rid of Net Neutrality was soon echoed by other network executives. In their view, the information superhighway was a toll road, where the big ISPs and a few well-heeled corporate partners would claim broadband’s fast lane for themselves.
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2006 SavetheInternet.com Launches. Gathers One Million Supporters.
In April 2006, the SavetheInternet.com Coalition launched and soon grew to include more than 800 organizations in support of an open and neutral Internet. Within six weeks, more than one million online activists signed a petition supporting Net Neutrality, and thousands of bloggers took up the cause. This unlikely alliance covered the political spectrum, putting the "fear of voters in the hearts of Washington politicians." Massive public support for Net Neutrality derailed a dangerous overhaul of the Telecom Act that failed to protect Internet openness.
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2006 Ted Stevens’ “Series of Tubes”
Two months into SavetheInternet.com's campaign, user-generated videos on Net Neutrality started to circulate via YouTube. Web comic Kent Nichols posted a monologue as "Ask a Ninja" that urged people to take action at SavetheInternet.com. In time, his video garnered more than one million views, driving scores of new activists to the campaign. Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Stevens further roiled social networks after a recording of his rant against Net Neutrality, in which he described the Internet as a “series of tubes,” spread from Internet forums to become a running gag on the Daily Show. The videos and Stevens’ rant brought the issue of Net Neutrality to whole new audiences.
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2007 Net Neutrality a Requirement of the AT&T/Bell South Merger
By the end of 2006, companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast had spent more than $150 million to gut Net Neutrality, but couldn’t overcome widespread public opposition. At the beginning of 2007, AT&T agreed to respect Net Neutrality as a two-year condition of its merger with BellSouth. The merger conditions showed that Net Neutrality was being taken seriously in Washington, where the phone and cable lobby had long dictated policy.
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2007 Verizon Silences NARAL, AT&T Censors Pearl Jam
Two incidents in late 2007 exposed the telcos’ gatekeeper ambitions. In September 2007, the New York Times revealed that Verizon Wireless had prevented NARAL Pro-Choice America from sending text messages to its own members. Verizon’s blocking put the company in the same league as AT&T, which just one month earlier had censored the live Webcast of a Pearl Jam performance that included criticism of President Bush. These episodes showed that when given the option, phone companies will discriminate against content they don't like, and they served as a wake-up call for anyone concerned about their plans to “manage” Internet content over their networks.
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2007 Comcast Blocks BitTorrent
Comcast gave us a glimpse of a world without Net Neutrality when an Associated Press investigation found that the company was blocking the file-sharing application BitTorrent. Despite mounting evidence of Internet blocking, the company refused to come clean and disclose its “network management” practices. A coalition of Net Neutrality supporters and legal scholars filed a complaint with the FCC urging the agency to stop the cable giant from meddling with our ability to share information online.
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2008 Comcast Blocks Access Offline, Too
The FCC took complaints about Comcast’s blocking seriously and convened a series of hearings across the country so that interested citizens could weigh in -- if only. Fearful that the public would lay into Comcast for violating Net Neutrality, the company hired people off the street to pack the first hearing at Harvard. The seat fillers took up so many chairs that Comcast critics and other members of the public were denied entry by campus police.
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2008 FCC Sanctions Comcast. Comcast Files Appeal.
In response to the public outcry and a mountain of evidence, FCC Chair Kevin Martin sanctioned Comcast for violating Net Neutrality. The complaint was brought to the agency after a coalition of Net users and activists caught the cable giant red-handed, jamming use of popular file-sharing applications. Martin ruled that Comcast had "arbitrarily" blocked Internet access and failed to disclose to consumers what it was doing. But the ink was barely dry on the FCC order before Comcast filed an appeal in federal court, challenging not only the FCC’s ruling but the agency’s entire authority to protect Web users.
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2008 Net Neutrality Supporter Elected President
Barack Obama was the first presidential candidate to make Internet policy a cornerstone of his campaign. Within two days of his election, Obama's transition team laid out the president’s science and technology agenda, and at the top of the list was his promise to protect the open Internet. "A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way," the agenda states. "Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."
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2009 Economic Stimulus Bill Mandates Openness and a Plan
Buried deep in President Barack Obama's American Reinvestment and Recovery Act is a line that brought a smile to the faces of Net Neutrality supporters -- and a scowl to phone and cable industry lobbyists. It requires that billions of dollars directed to connect more Americans to broadband be spent on services that meet "nondiscrimination and network interconnection obligations." The stimulus package stipulated that federal money earmarked for high-speed Internet services be spent the right way: building networks that abide by Net Neutrality.
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2009 New FCC Chair Launches Net Neutrality Rulemaking
The fight for Net Neutrality gained ground when Julius Genachowski, the newly appointed FCC chair, announced plans to expand existing agency rules to protect the free and open Internet. Genachowski said the FCC must be a "smart cop on the beat,” preserving Net Neutrality against increased efforts by providers to block services and applications over both wired and wireless connections. The chairman cited a number of examples where network providers had acted as gatekeepers and concluded, “If we wait too long to preserve a free and open Internet, it will be too late.”
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2010 Phone and Cable Industry Bankrolls Lobbyists, Lays Astroturf
As the FCC began its Net Neutrality inquiry, the phone and cable industry that controls Internet access for 97 percent of Americans went into a spending overdrive. They funneled tens of millions of dollars to nearly 500 Washington lobbyists. Their mission: further consolidate industry control over Internet access and kill Net Neutrality, before the public gets a say. Untold sums have also been spent on Astroturf groups, fake grassroots operations that are funded by corporations to manufacture the impression of public support and that generate misinformation designed to sway policymakers and the media.
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2010 A Quarter Million for “Reclassification”
Three weeks after the federal appeals court undermined the FCC’s ability to safeguard Internet users, the SavetheInternet.com Coalition delivered nearly 250,000 signatures on petitions asking the agency to take swift action to protect the free-flowing Web. They called on the FCC to “reclassify” broadband as a telecommunications service, over which the agency has unchallenged authority to promote broadband access and to protect consumers. It’s now up to Chairman Genachowski to heed the call, face down phone and cable lobbyists, and stand with Internet users in defense of an open Internet.
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2010 Two Million Tell FCC: Be Strong
The SavetheInternet.com Coalition and its many activists conducted a week-long marathon of petition deliveries in advance of the FCC’s vote on its open Internet proceeding. Every hour of the day we dropped off 50,000 signatures until the agency closed its public comment period. The more than 2 million petitions collected from across the country called on the FCC to stand up for real Net Neutrality and safeguard the open Internet.
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2010 FCC Caves. Offers ‘Fake Net Neutrality.’
By a 3-2 vote, the FCC approved new rules intended to prevent Internet providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from acting as gatekeepers on the Web. The rules, however, heavily favored the industry they were intended to regulate, leaving consumers with minimal protections. FCC Chairman Genachowski chose to ignore the overwhelming public support for real Net Neutrality, instead moving forward with industry-written rules that for the first time in Internet history allowed discrimination online and via the wireless Internet.
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2010 Carrier Violates Net Neutrality
Wireless carrier MetroPCS’s gave users a preview of the wireless future in a world without Net Neutrality protections on the mobile Web. The company started to offer unlimited talk, text, “Web browsing” and YouTube at a base price of $40 per month. But the scheme exists inside a “walled garden” that appears to block Skype, Netflix and other popular consumer Internet services. Free Press and its allies soon countered with a complaint urging the FCC to investigate the plan.
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2010 Congress Moves against an Open Internet
Extreme partisans in the House rallied behind a congressional “resolution of disapproval,” which would strip the FCC of the authority to enforce its already weakened Net Neutrality rules. The measure, which is likely to be taken up by the Senate in fall 2011, is a dangerous overreach that would hamstring the FCC and leave Internet users unprotected while giving companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon free rein to censor free speech or block access to any website.
Senate Vote on "Resolution of Disapproval"
This month, the Senate will vote on a measure that could strip the FCC of its ability to enforce
Net Neutrality rules, surrendering our right to speak online to companies like Comcast, Verizon
and AT&T. Take action now to stop this dangerous resolution.
