Coin operated press release from the opposition. They've got the money, we have the people.

Democrats pledging to fight for net neutrality? Finally.

NPR does internet freedom. And does it well, I hasten to add. (Thanks Mark!)

Alyssa Milano blogs for internet freedom. Can't she just wiggle her nose and make Joe "Boss Hogg" Barton just disappear? Uh, wait. Er . . .

Tim Wu's testimony today was excellent and extremely revelatory.

Representative Markey has a video up of his opening statement. It is well worth your time.

I've posted Rep. Markey's full statement after the jump, but this is my favorite part:

The reason for the heightened interest is that tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of American businesses use and rely upon the Internet every day. In addition to its vital economic role, the Internet is also an unparalleled vehicle for open communications by non-commercial users, for religious speech, for civic involvement, and our First Amendment freedoms.

Major kudos to Rep. Markey for stepping out and leading this fight. He's absolutely right about the role of the internet has on our freedoms. At a time when the major media outlets have utterly failed the country and the daily newspapers are discarded in favor of the subtle insipidness of television and cable the internet is the last place in our nation (and in some places the world) where we are literally free to express ourselves and be heard.

The a non-discriminatory internet is essential to the preservation of our freedoms and critical to the health and maintainence of our democracy. Hyperbole? No.

Read the Faq, visit Save the Interent at Myspace.com, at the homepage www.savetheinternet, watch the video, visit the tech companies who support internet freedom and when you are done, take action.

Supplementary info after the jump.

As Ben Scott of Free Press notes:

We all take it for granted that every website and application on the Internet is treated equally by the network. That’s because it’s always been that way. We’ve had fundamental protections in the law that guarantee nondiscrimination since the birth of the Internet. At least, we did. In the summer of 2005, the FCC pulled a fast one. Without any fanfare or press coverage, the FCC made a new rule that allows broadband networks to discriminate, to decide what content and applications go fast, slow, or not at all. Equality and the free market be damned. That’s right, in the midst of the Internet revolution that spawned the most successful democratic communications medium and economic engine the country has ever known, the federal government handed the whole thing over to the telephone and cable companies to do as they like. In the 8 months since then, these network owners have declared that they intend to start a business model based on discrimination, extorting money from every online content and applications provider. All this would have been illegal a year ago. It threatens to ruin the Internet as we know it.

From Rep. Markey:

Tomorrow, I will be offering a "Network Neutrality" amendment, cosponsored by Mr. Boucher, Ms. Eshoo, and Mr. Inslee, to preserve the Internet and its open, non-discriminatory nature. Since the Subcommittee vote, dozens of web blogs have started talking about this issue. A broad coalition has launched web campaigns, such as www.savetheinternet.com, and www.dontmesswiththenet.com. These coalitions are diverse and growing hourly. They include leading Internet companies such as Ebay, Yahoo, Amazon, as well as entrepreneurs, small businesses, consumer groups, Common Cause, Gun Owners of America, the National Religious Broadcasters, moveon.org, the ACLU, and thousands of concerned citizens. I welcome the support of the Internet community in our legislative efforts.

The reason for the heightened interest is that tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of American businesses use and rely upon the Internet every day. In addition to its vital economic role, the Internet is also an unparalleled vehicle for open communications by non-commercial users, for religious speech, for civic involvement, and our First Amendment freedoms.

Yet the Internet is at endangered because of the misguided provisions of the bill before us, which put at grave risk the Internet as an engine of innovation, job creation, and economic growth. The bill permits the imposition of new fees, or "broadband bottleneck taxes" for Internet sites to access high-bandwidth consumers. This will stifle openness, endanger our global competitiveness, and warp the web into a tiered Internet of bandwidth haves and have-nots. It is the introduction of creeping Internet protectionism into the free and open World Wide Web.

Tomorrow's network neutrality debate will present members with a choice. It is a choice between favoring the broadband designs of a small handful of very large companies or safeguarding the dreams of thousands of inventors, entrepreneurs, and small businesses. Tomorrow we will either vote to preserve the Internet as we know it, or instead, vote to fundamentally and detrimentally alter it.

The underlying bill also departs from the historic principle of non-discrimination and competition in the context of national cable franchises. The proposed bill permits a national franchise for cable service, grants multi-billion dollar companies access to public rights-of-way, yet has no service area requirement for providing cable service. By failing to include a build-out provision to ensure service area parity between a Bell company entering a franchise area and the incumbent cable operator, it allows a national franchisee to use public rights-of-way in a community but serve only select neighborhoods within the community.

Now, getting access to a community's public rights-of-way without any obligation to serve the whole community is a sweetheart deal for phone companies. But it is a raw deal for the neighborhoods that will be skipped over or ignored.

Moreover, the bill compounds the consumer risk when the omission of a service area requirement is considered in the context of an incumbent cable operator qualifying for a national franchise. Under the Barton bill, an incumbent cable operator may seek a national franchise after the phone company arrives in a franchise area, even if the phone company is serving just one household in the franchise area. The lack of a service area requirement at the national level then means that the incumbent cable operator no longer has to serve the entire franchise either. In other words, the operator is free to skimp on service upgrades or withdraw service from any part of their historic service area within the affected community. The incumbent may also raise rates in areas of the community the phone company is not serving in order to cross-subsidize its offering in the part of town the phone company has chosen to serve.

The prospect of cable service withdrawal, poorer service quality, and rate hikes represents a serious consumer protection flaw in the bill and only a provision ensuring service area parity can effectively remedy this flaw.

Thank you and I look forward to the debate and the votes tomorrow.

Agonist Net neutrality forums here.

~
Daily Press Update:

Rush's million-dollar conflict?

Coalition launches push to keep Internet open

Tim Wu on Internet Freedom and Net Neutrality

Mike McCurry: Mouthpiece For Deception