Page 313 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Net Neutral ty

not and will not discriminate against Web sites. They claimed that Net Neutral-
ity is a new regulation that “fundamentally changes the Internet.”
However, those fighting for Net Neutrality pointed to statements made by
William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp.,
saying that “an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for
example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load
faster than that of Google Inc.” (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2005/11/30/AR2005113002109_pf.html). The SavetheInternet.
com Coalition also pointed to existing cases of discrimination such as the 2004
case where North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers
from using any rival Web-based phone service (see http://www.freepress.net/
news/13604).
Not long before the Senate voted on the COPE Act, Alaska Republican Ted
Stevens, head of the Senate Commerce Committee, made the fateful remark:
“The internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big
truck. It’s a series of tubes.” The statement was humorously conveyed on The
Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and even remixed into a techno song, which was
widely distributed online. Shortly after the Ted Stevens debacle, the Savethe
Internet.com Coalition received a further boost when Internet pioneer Sir Tim
Berners-Lee forcefully argued in favor of Net Neutrality in a New York Times in-
terview (see http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/technology/circuits/27neut.
html?ref=circuits).
Over the summer, hundreds of Internet users concerned about Net Neutrality
inundated the Internet with videos and blog entries encouraging fellow citizens
to get involved in the issue. As the Senate’s August recess drew to a close, citizens
supporting Net Neutrality rallied in 25 cities nationwide, delivering SavetheInternet
petitions to their senators and urging them to oppose the phone and cable com-
panies’ attempts to gut Net Neutrality. The citizen-led movement would later
be described by Salon as “a ragtag army of grass-roots Internet groups, armed
with low-budget videos, music parodies and petitions” (see http://www.salon.
com/tech/feature/2006/10/02/slayers). The telecoms employed Mike McCurry,
Bill Clinton’s former press secretary, to lead their lobbying effort with the
industry-funded group HandsOfftheInternet. The group produced its own on-
line videos poking fun at the SavetheInternet.com Coalition and relaying their
view of Net Neutrality.
Throughout 2006, the nation’s largest phone and cable companies spent more
than $100 million on D.C. lobbyists, think tanks, ads, and campaign contri-
butions to defeat Net Neutrality. During this same time, the SavetheInternet
.com Coalition grew to include 850 groups, some previously mentioned,
making it a formidable grass-roots organization. The coalition also includes
thousands of bloggers and hundreds of small companies that do business on-
line. This diverse coalition resulted in more than 1.5 million Americans con-
tacting their representatives urging them to support Net Neutrality. The HR
5252 bill died with the end of 109th Congress, and the situation looked posi-
tive for Net Neutrality proponents with the new Democrat controlled House
and Congress.