The new politics starts with network neutrality

By Michael Fraase

Sunday, 23 April 2006 01:14PM CST

Section: Internet

savetheinternet.com has launched as an attempt to ensure network neutrality, the principle by which all data traversing the internet is treated the same, without regard to the content it contains. This principle is under threat by forthcoming legislation sponsored by Representatives Joe Barton (R-Texas), Fred Upton (R-Michigan), Charles Pickering (R-Mississippi), and Bobby Rush (D-Illinois)—the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement (COPE) Act—that would allow the telephone and cable companies to institute a system of tiered content on the internet, where some content is treated preferentially relative to other content, for a price of course. Network neutrality ensures that the internet infrastructure’s sole job is to move data from point to point without regard to the data itself.

If you care about independent media, this should be of critical concern to you.

At first glance this appears to be a coalition of the usual suspects—Stanford’s Lawrence Lessig and Columbia’s Timothy Wu top the list, for example—but some eye-opening surprises are also evident, including the Gun Owners of America and Covenant College.

Here’s what you can do now:

  1. Read the Save the Internet frequently asked questions (FAQ).
  2. Sign the Save the Internet petition. Just fill it out; it’s smart and identifies your Representative and Senators automatically. (Unfortunately, my Representative Betty McCollum (D-Minnesota) deemed herself to be “unreachable” on the internet and I had to manually send her the message by post). Be sure to customize the message so it doesn’t seem like a simple spam form; here’s what I used: “As my elected representatives, I’m asking you to vote *AGAINST* the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement (COPE) Act in the House and *FOR* the Internet Nondiscrimination Act in the Senate.”
  3. Ask your organization to join the Save the Internet Coalition.
  4. Write about these issues, blog about it, talk about it as if the internet depends upon it—because it does.

It’s time for a new politics. Now and here it starts.

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