BAM! Dems Turn Up the Heat on Net Neutrality

Supporters of net neutrality principles fomented a considerable backlash against Bell interests in late April and early May, hoping to spur politicians and the public into joining their calls for regulation. The controversy reached so deep into the American consciousness that a coalition made up of everyone from Gun Owners of America and Afro-Netizen to MoveOn.org and Consumers Union formed SaveTheInternet.com to make people aware of what it called “a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort by Internet providers like AT&T [Inc.] and Verizon [Communications Inc.] to gut network neutrality, the Internet’s First Amendment.”

On the other side of the debate, a variety of entities — including AT&T, BellSouth Corp., Comcast Corp., USTelecom and Verizon — started NetCompetition.org, which they say is in support of market competition versus government regulation on the net neutrality issue. “We believe the debate between net neutrality and net competition needs more substance,” said Scott Cleland, NetCompetition.org’s chairman. “Everyone needs to get clearer about ... the implications and consequences of this issue.”

In the midst of it all, Democratic politicians took their own stand against telecom rewrite proposals that had scrapped net neutrality. Days after the House Energy and Commerce Committee stripped all references to the concept from the Barton-Rush Act, Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey introduced the Network Neutrality Act of 2006. “The fact that Ed introduced a freestanding bill was done primarily for the purpose of drawing additional attention to the issue,” Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., told xchange. “There’s no thought that Ed Markey’s freestanding bill is going to be taken up in a Republican Congress and passed by itself. That’s not the goal. The goal is to draw more attention to the issue.”

Markey’s bill came just one day after Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens introduced the sweeping Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006. That proposal addressed net neutrality only in that it called on the FCC to oversee any abuses of the Internet and was disparaged widely by net neutrality advocates.

Indeed, Boucher already had plans in the works to take the case for net neutrality to the House Judiciary Committee. He planned either to debate any legislation on the House floor that did not include net neutrality, or “use the antitrust laws to address the issue and to do this through the House Judiciary Committee. And before Judiciary, I think we’ll get a different result.”

For more on net neutrality, download a FREE copy of xchange's latest eBook, Net Neutrality & Fair Use, sponsored by Network Insight.

For additional information on current legislation and more, check out the Net Neutrality & Fair Use eBook available at www.xchangemag.com/ebooks/june06_net.html