Former Clinton press secretary, Mike McCurry, writes on Internet Freedom and net neutrality in today's Moonie Times:

“The absence of regulation over the last decade allowed engineers, entrepreneurs and innovators to provide us the amazing tool for communication, learning, entertainment and commerce that the Internet has become. There was bipartisan consensus when a Democratic president agreed with a Republican Congress to resist calls for regulation of the Internet in 1996 when our telecommunications laws were last seriously rewritten.”

In response to him Ben Scott the policy director at the Free Press shoots back:

McCurry is either terrifically confused or outright lying. The 1996 Telecommunications Act did indeed have bipartisan support and the backing of the Clinton White House. And it explicitly advocated nondiscrimination on the Internet. Sections 201 and 202 state in no uncertain terms that access to the network must be provided on “just, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory terms.” That was the rule of the road of the Internet at its inception. That was the underlying protection that has ensured that the Internet market for content, applications, and services has been free and competitive. Without that protection, network operators would do what they are preparing to do now—use market power over the physical network to extort money from the content and applications providers. Without net neutrality, we would never have had the Internet we have today. No chance.

more after the jump

Continued:

Only in 2005 did the FCC strip out the network neutrality rules that are in the 1996 Act (supported by the Clinton White House). To say that we never had these protections, and that now advocates of Internet freedom are trying to regulate the market is TOTAL NONSENSE. Net neutrality brought us the Internet from its date of birth up until 2005. In August of 2005, the FCC (in a colossally bad decision) cut cable modem and DSL providers loose of these obligations. Since then, they have all announced that they will begin discriminating. The only thing that holds them back is that the Verizon and AT&T are temporarily (for another 18 months) obliged to maintain neutrality as a condition of their recent merger activity. They are all on their best behavior, waiting for Congress to give them the green light to discriminate. If they win, that’ll be the end of the Internet as we know it.

All we want is for nondiscrimination to be put back where it started and where it belongs. We’ve been for the last 8 months in a purgatory without the First Amendment for the Internet, network neutrality. It’s time we recognized that this is not a path we want to pursue. All we want is what the Clinton White House and the bipartisan supporters of the 1996 Act wanted.

So what is it Mr. McCurry? Are you confused or lying?

Critical background here.

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