http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Leveling_Internet_0424.html

American Samizdat
John Steinberg - Raw Story Columnist
Published: Monday April 24, 2006

Raw Story is in danger. Your right to read news stories and writing that disrupt the government/Big Media symbiosis is under attack. And you probably don’t even know it.

There has been so much going on lately, what with plans to nuke Iran and the rolling mutiny among the top brass that you may well have missed another growing menace to all that we have built here.

The Internet phenomenon – the dizzying evolution from Netscape to Yahoo to Google to the new world of blogs and wikis – is the result of an essential structural attribute of the medium: the content-neutrality of the pipes we use to connect to it. It is the natural tendency of the powerful to silence and hinder anything that threatens their dominance, but the phone companies could not stop AOL, AOL could not stop Yahoo, and Yahoo could not stop Google, because the folks who owned the pipes used to carry all those ones and zeroes to and from your computer were not permitted to discriminate against bits they didn’t like. (The concept of the “common carrier” dates back at least to the earliest regulation of railroads more than a hundred years ago.) That level field has also resulted in the current flowering of our participatory democracy. But that flower is about to pruned or even torn out by the roots.

The Orwellian “Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006,” sponsored by Congressman Joe Barton (R, Texas), will, if it becomes law, allow your Internet provider to charge you extra to read this column. It will allow your provider to block this column entirely. Congressman Ed Markey (D, Mass), who sponsored a defeated amendment that would have explicitly preserved neutrality, explains:

The Joe Barton (R-TX) sponsored telecommunications bill that is moving through the Energy & Commerce Committee in the House would fundamentally change the way the Internet works. … In short, the Barton bill opens the door for the Bells and other ISPs to throw out a key principle of net neutrality and enact a new era of telecom taxes and tolls, roadblocks that would shut down the avenues of innovation that have allowed the Internet to become what it is today.

That bill took a big step toward being enacted into law last week.
A House subcommittee handed phone companies a victory Wednesday by voting 27-4 to advance a bill that would make it easier for them to deliver television service over the Internet and clearing the way for all Internet carriers to charge more for speedier delivery.

Earlier in the day, the subcommittee voted 23-8 to reject an amendment by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., that would have inserted specific language designed to enforce network neutrality and prevent the feared creation of fast and slow lanes on the Internet.

"Members from both sides of the aisle endorsed a plan which will permit cable and phone companies to construct 'pay as you surf, pay as you post' toll booths for the Internet" said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy in Washington.
But Sonia Arrison, director of technology studies for the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco, dismissed concerns that the proposed bill would lead to a two-tiered Internet.
"There's plenty of competition," Arrison said. "The market will take care of it."

Ah, yes... the market. The same market that has allocated television and radio airwaves so well. The same market that has resulted in our oligopolistic and largely bootlicking newspaper industry. (That market, by the way, is also the mechanism by which the Pacific Research Institute collects its funding… from SBC/AT&T, Verizon and Freedom Communications. Also Big Oil and Big Tobacco, but I digress.)

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http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Leveling_Internet_0424.html
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This is quite fucked. A viable means of communication for all voices is now trying to be silenced by money and power. Only slaves and opportunists could possibly think this was a good thing (if i'm wrong about this let me know..)

I urge all members of these boards to spread the word to friends (co-workers etc) and spread your disgust to those that suppossedly represent you.

here's emails of everyones congressmen:
http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html

Email and phone:
http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm

Wow no one thinks this is important enough to comment on?

The pinnacle of communication is about to be destroyed by power and money yet no one has an opinion?

Congress Casting Vote on Future of Internet
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-silver/congress-casting-vote-on-_b_19793.html

And just off the wire: this morning: the Chicago Sun-Times reported that a community development center founded by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), the Barton bill's lone Democratic co-sponsor, received a $1 million grant from the charitable arm of SBC/AT&T -- the giant phone company that's the biggest opponent of net neutrality. Add this apparent quid pro quo to the long list of corrupt policymaking in Washington.There's too much going on here. AT&T helps the NSA spy on us, now Congress is set to reward AT&T at our expense. Votes are being bought. I smell a giant stinking rat.

I didn't comment on it before this because I am not really sure what effect the bill would have. Would it simply allow certain service providers to provide new services, ie television and charge for this service or would it do something else?

I already pay a high fee to get speedy internet access. People who don't pay for cable access pay less but they have slower access. Is there anything wrong with that? How would this bill change that?

Wow no one thinks this is important enough to comment on?
The pinnacle of communication is about to be destroyed by power and money yet no one has an opinion?

It's bad and sad, like many of your articles. Often I find it difficult to muster anything of importance to say. Posts like these are more informative than fodder for debate.

Typically debate is fueled by emotion, that is why trolls are so successful at what they do. People just can't resist. It's a lot harder to speak purely intellectually, despite it's beneficial side effects on your mind.

Democrats introduce 'Net neutrality bill

By Grant Gross, IDG News Service, 05/02/06

After failing last week to add a provision to a telecommunications reform bill, four Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday introduced a free-standing bill aimed at preventing broadband carriers from discriminating against competing Web content or services.

The bill, sponsored by Representatives Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Jay Inslee of Washington state, Anna Eshoo of California and Rick Boucher of Virginia, would create a 'Net neutrality law banning phone and cable companies from charging Web sites for faster data transmission, or blocking their online competitors' content and services. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has introduced a similar bill in the Senate.

The four Democrats' amendment failed, on a vote of 34-22, largely along party lines, when the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a wide-ranging telecom reform bill last week.

The FCC voted to deregulate DSL providers in August 2005, and backers of a 'Net neutrality law say broadband providers could now charge their competitors Internet tolls and slow down the content of those who don't pay.

"We cannot allow telecommunications companies to hijack the Internet," Inslee said in a statement. "After all, the beauty of the Internet is its open architecture."

Public Knowledge, a group advocating for consumer rights online, praised the new House bill. "[The] legislation recognizes that the cable and telephone companies are threatening to take over the Internet, and that strong nondiscrimination policies are needed to prevent them from limiting consumer choice and favoring their own content and services," Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said in an e-mail.

Broadband providers have repeatedly said they will not block or impair their customers' access to competing Web content or services, although some have talked about charging Web sites extra for a faster tier of service.

The House Democrats' bill comes a day after Senators Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) introduced a telecom reform bill similar in some ways to the one that passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee and awaits action on the House floor.

Like the House bill, the Senate bill would streamline the franchising requirements for telecom carriers looking to offer Internet-based television services in competition with cable providers. The Stevens bill would also require the use of a broadcast flag anticopying system to protect digital video broadcasts, and it would require cities considering municipally run wireless broadband networks to first allow private providers to bid on the project.

While the House bill endorses general net neutrality goals, the Senate bill would only instruct the FCC to study whether a net neutrality law is needed. Net neutrality advocates said the Senate bill fails to protect U.S. consumers against broadband providers that want to block or slow competing content or services.

But Randolph May, a senior fellow and director of communications policy at conservative think tank the Progress and Freedom Foundation, praised the Stevens bill for not mandating net neutrality rules. "Especially in light of the fact that presently there are no identified consumer harms that need remedying, this 'study first, mandate later' approach is much to be commended," May wrote in his blog.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/050206-democrats-net-neutrality-bill.html

I get my fone,tv and broadband thru 'ntl',and most consumers here would do the same,with various fone companys ie NTL,BT,EIRCOM.Starting to notice servers advertisements on tv now for broadband..

http://freepress.net/ (http://freepress.net/)
There's been a campaign about this issue for quite a while, even subscribing and sending your complaint to congress through them.
If this ever happens, then (even though) people in the country are not united, but all us could simply boycott the service, just think what would happen to them if most us discontinue the INTERNET connection, they would be receiving ZILCH from our pockets.
Could we, the users, ever agree on something like this, if we could only work together not one single corporations will abuse the public as they do today. Once again, all we have to do is stop getting their services. I thought once of creating a web page called www.boycott.net (http://www.boycott.net) and from there fight the corporations, but lack the time or money to do so. Something like a boycott would do a lot for the people in the country.
Are we once and for all ready to take our future in our hands. The service companies are not making us any favor by providing their services, it is us who allow them to have their businesses growing by buying from them. we can stop any of them anytime.