Net Neutrality Voted Down in House, Despite Public Opinion
June 10th, 2006
Well, it’s unfortunately up to the Senate now.
The House vote against an amendment that would make Net Neutrality enforceable is the result of swarming lobbyists and a multi-million-dollar media campaign by telephone companies that want Congress to hand them control of the Internet. Not particularly surprising there were also fronts put into place to confuse the public with names such as “Hands Off the Internet” that were actually efforts against Net Neutrality. Isn’t the world of lobbyist and politics grand?
It now falls to the Senate to save the free and open Internet. Fortunately, Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (R-N.D.) have introduced a bipartisan measure, the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2006” (S. 2917), that would provide meaningful protection for Net Neutrality. This excellent bill may be introduced as an amendment when the Senate takes up its own rewrite of the Telecommunications Act later this summer. The next key hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled for June 20.
Call Congress today: No senator can in good conscience vote against Internet freedom and with the telecom cartel.
For information on who voted, and which way they voted see here for an easier to read list broken out by state, or here for the official roll call of the vote. In our lovely republican state of Missouri it was 100% nay votes, apparently party lines and big business lobbies mean more than their constituents. Strange coming from a party who prides itself as advocates of the Small Business owner.
For a good overview and information on just what “Net Neutrality” is and the issues involved see here . While the issue crosses many boundaries the basic principal at hand is whether or not to allow the few major ISP’s to be allowed to give certain content providers and types ‘priority’ access and therefore limit or ‘de-prioritize’ traffic to other providers and services. For example, a large company like Microsoft (who to be fair is for Net Neutrality by the way) could pay AOL so that it prioritized all traffic to its websites. All AOL users would then have a very fast, good experience whenever they went to www.microsoft.com but could have a very slow and painful experience when visiting a website who either chose not to pay AOL or could not afford to do so. Or a more likely scenario would be AOL providing poor access to any of its competitors, or perhaps no access at all. Effectively what you end up with is a two-tier internet, with the wealthy enterprises paying for unfettered visitation and the rest of the world sharing whatever is leftover. See our previous blog on the why you should care about network neutrality.
Entry Filed under: General Technology, Internet, Consulting
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