House Ignores Public, Sells Out the Internet

Growing Right-Left Coalition Gains Momentum, Looks to Senate to Save Internet Freedom from Telecom Cartel

WASHINGTON -- April 26, 2006 -- Today the House Energy and Commerce Committee struck a blow to Internet freedom by voting down a proposal to protect Network Neutrality from attacks by companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast.

The diverse, bipartisan SavetheInternet.com Coalition vowed to continue rallying public support for Internet freedom as the legislation moves to the full House and Senate. In less than one week, the coalition gathered more than 250,000 petition signatures, rallied more than 500 blogs to write about this issue, and flooded Congress with thousands of phone calls.
The "Markey Amendment" supporting Net Neutrality was voted down by a vote of 34 to 22. The "Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act" telecom law, or COPE Act, passed out of the committee without any meaningful protection for Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality means all online activity must be treated equally, and companies like AT&T must allow Internet users to view the smallest blog just as easily as the largest corporate Web site.
"The Commerce Committee is headed in the opposite direction of where the American public wants to go," said Columbia Law Professor Timothy Wu, a pro-market advocate and one of the intellectual architects of the Net Neutrality principle."Most people favor an open and neutral Internet and don't want Internet gatekeepers taxing and tollboothing innovation."

Major telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get Congress to change the rules to let them discriminate on the Internet -- forcing Web sites to pay "protection money" to ensure their sites will work properly.

"Predictably, the careerist politicians on the House Energy and Commerce Committee rolled right over in their frantic desire to do the telecoms' bidding," said Craig Fields, director of Internet operations for Gun Owners of America. "It makes no difference to them whether the Internet will remain a free and vibrant marketplace of ideas. As far as they are concerned, if big business is happy, all is right with America. And so we look with hope to the Senate, that supposedly august body, which prides itself on its more 'deliberative' pace and tone. They paint themselves as conscientious adults -- perhaps, just perhaps, they'll actually act like such when it is their turn to decide the future of the Internet."