What's happening in Congress?

The telephone and cable companies are filling up congressional campaign coffers and hiring high-priced lobbyists. They've set up "Astroturf" groups like "Hands Off the Internet" to confuse the issue and give the appearance of grassroots support.

Congress is now considering a major overhaul of the Telecommunications Act. The primary bill in the House is called the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006" and is sponsored by Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas), Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Rep. Charles Pickering (R-Miss.) and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.).

The current version of the COPE Act includes watered-down net neutrality provisions that are essentially meaningless. An amendment offered in a key subcommittee by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), which would have instituted real net neutrality requirements, was defeated after intense industry lobbying against it.

But it's not too late yet. A full committee vote on the measure — and another opportunity to save the Internet — could happen as soon as April 26.

There's a white hot firestorm on the issue on Capitol Hill. No one wants to see the telcos make a radical change to the internet and screw this medium up, except, well, the telcos [which of course is why we've not heard about any of this on TV news -mith]. And now members of Congress are listening to us. The telcos have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and many years lobbying for their position; we launched four days ago, and have closed a lot of ground. Over the next few months, as the public wakes up, we'll close the rest of it.

I watched the markup and the voting, and there was noticeable defensiveness among Congressmen on the wrong side of this. They are wrong, they know it, and they are ashamed. Now they know people are watching. So we didn't win this vote, but this close margin was nonetheless a smack to the jaw of the insiders, and a clear victory for the people. Now the battle moves out of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and onto more favorable terrain.

As Sean-Paul said to me over email, "today was a victory as a few key players on the full committee changed their votes. Important action is required heading into the Senate but we have created significant momentum and the telco cartel is very afraid of us now.

This is not how they wanted it to go down. They wanted this amendment to fail quietly, so the Senate would not take it up. We changed the rules today. Great work."

The Internet is not a free public good. It is a bunch of wires and switches and connections and pipes and it is creaky. You all worship at Vince Cerf who has a clear financial interest in the outcome of this debate but you immediately castigate all of us who disagree and impune our motives. I get paid a reasonable but small sum to argue what I believe. How many of the net neuts out there are honest about the financial resources and special interests behind your side of the argument? Do you really believe this is good v. evil or just an honest disagreement about what will make the 'net flourish and prosper? What do you make of David Farber's recent caution about the unintended consequences of regulating the Internet?

I am against giving the FCC and other government regulators the power to decide how the Internet will build out in the future. That is what you net neuts are for. The Internet has worked absent regulation and now you want to introduce it for a solution to what? What content is being denied? What service is being degraded? What is not right with the Internet that you are trying to cure?

Instead, you have some myth about dangers ahead if someone actually asks (horrors!) that we pay for the billions it will take to make the Internet to work in the decades ahead? Do you want to pay or do you want to make the giant content companies that will be streaming video and data rich services to pay? I'd rather have a robust Internet that can handle the volume of traffic that we will put on it in the near future rather than an public Internet where we all wait in line for the next porno-spammer to let his content go before we get to have arguments like this.

This is not an issue where there is a progressive, pro-little guy, pro-Dem stand versus the big bad companies that pay big bad lobbyists (what a joke you think I am one of them). This is a clear disagreement on principle about what will get us the next generation of the internet that will work for all of us.

Any one want to have a rational conversation about that or do you want to rant and rave and provide a lot of May Day rhetoric that is not based in any fact?

I joined the effort opposing regulated net neutrality because, contrary to what you write, it's absolutely consistent with the Clinton Administration's policies toward the Internet.

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During this time, there were repeated attempts to bring Internet regulation under the federal government's umbrella. To the Administration's credit, we consistently resisted the temptation - see Ira Magaziner's 1997 report, "A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce." Also, in 1998, the President signed a moratorium on conflicting state and local Internet taxes that helped promote the explosive growth of online commerce.
These so-called "net neutrality" regulations would completely undercut this legacy.

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But once you try and define what is to be regulated, unintended consequences will surely result. If broadband providers are made liable in court for the way their pipes "carry" digitized information, you're going to have Congress and FCC regulators writing rules that cover the basics of Internet traffic. Do we really think the Internet will benefit by having government officials write rules on caching, collocation, packet reassembly and the like? And when these rules are challenged in court (meaning more delays), will that help or hurt efforts to improve America's broadband deployment?
Trying to guess at a regulated formula for network neutrality that would protect the public interest and not impede innovation and investment for the Internet is a high-risk proposition.

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There's another aspect of net neutrality that's even more problematic: the way it mixes two separate entities, namely the public Internet and private networks. For twenty years, private networks have been helping business, government, universities, and others that need specialized communication. There's nothing wrong with groups that are willing to pay a little extra because they need a specialized service - think of UPS vs. the postal service.
So if net neutrality regulations are passed, would federal regulators have to write separate rules for public vs. private networks? Would there be different federal rules for low-bandwidth IP services that use the public Internet and high-bandwidth services that don't?
Entire forests will be sacrificed to produce all the legal and technical filings that would surround these and other neutrality questions. In my view, we're far better off continuing on the sound path the Clinton Administration established.
Having federal regulators and Congressional staff writing Internet regulations is not the best way to promote online diversity. Letting the technology continue to evolve unfettered is. Network companies are going to spend billions developing the infrastructure necessary to bring us the Internet of the future. We will get in the way of that robust deployment if we make it harder for those companies to get a return on their investment. (If you don't trust me, listen to the Wall Street analysts who said exactly that in their congressional testimony recently - the unintended consequences of regulated net neutrality will make investors skeptical about providing the capital needed to make the net capable of what we are soon going to demand of it.)
How will the "little guy" with interesting content or a good idea or the next "new, new thing" succeed if he or she finds a clogged Internet that can't get the job done? How does that help the constituencies we Democrats need to represent? How does that enhance free speech on the web?
Look, I have to make a buck sure. But I am happy to be on my side of debate and not yours.
--Mike McCurry
CoChair, Hands Off the Internet

Internet regulators have rejected plans to create a domain for pornography websites ending with the .xxx suffix.

Advocates of the exclusive domain had argued that it would make it easier for web users to locate - or avoid - pornography online.

Conservative opponents of the plan said it would legitimise pornography, while opponents in the porn industry warned it could lead to more state control.

Internet regulator Icann's chief said the decision was not political.

"The heart of the decision today was not driven by a political consideration," Paul Twomey told the Associated Press news agency.

"The Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes," he said during a June 28 committee session.

"And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled. And if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."

In his 11-minute discourse, he said he'd seen these delays firsthand: "I just the other day got -- an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially."

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Host Jon Stewart had an alternate explanation for why it took so long for Stevens to receive his staff's e-mail: "Maybe it's because you do not seem to know jack BLEEP about computers or the Internet ... but hey, you're just the guy in charge of regulating it."

H.R. 3458, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, is designed to assess and promote Internet freedom for consumers and content providers. The bill states that it is the policy of the United States to protect the right of consumers to access lawful content, run lawful applications, and use lawful services of their choice on the Internet while preserving and promoting the open and interconnected nature of broadband networks, enabling consumers to connect to such networks their choice of lawful devices, as long as such devices do not harm the network. The legislation also directs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to promulgate several rules relating to enforcement and implementation of the legislation, including rules to ensure that providers of Internet access service fulfill the duties and disclose meaningful information to consumers about a provider’s Internet access service in clear, uniform, and conspicuous manner. H.R. 3458 makes clear that it does not prohibit an Internet access provider from engaging in reasonable network management consistent with the policies and duties of nondiscrimination and openness set forth in the bill, nor does the legislation affect any law or regulation addressing prohibited or unlawful activity, including any laws or regulations prohibiting theft of content.

Rep. Markey introduced similar Internet freedom legislation in the 110th Congress, H.R. 5353, which Rep. Eshoo also co-sponsored. In the 109th Congress, Rep. Markey offered a net neutrality amendment to the COPE Act in May 2006.

Are you kidding? They just outlawed free speech. Anything they want to call hate speech is now verboten.

Obama and muslim countries are pushing similar global legislation that would allow muslim global power to shut down criticism of their religion and would allow Obama further ability to close down free speech.

His czar has a lifelong history of advocating censorship of internet and talk radio.

Whereupon even reading the bible passages in church dealing with homosexuality will technically be a crime.

Chief Operating Officer Kimberly Longey oversees organizational development, strategic planning, staffing and financial management activities. She is also a key member of our fundraising team. Kimberly has 23 years' experience building, growing and reinventing nonprofit organizations. Prior to joining Free Press, Kimberly served as deputy director of the Proteus Fund

(Soros, a currency speculator and drug legalization advocate, is a major contributor to Tides, having donated more than $7 million.)

The Shadow Party is a top-down creation. George Soros founded it, organized it and runs it to this day...DiscovertheNetwork.org illuminates the intricate personal and financial relationships binding leftwing organizations together. While compiling this database, Horowitz and his team uncovered the hidden command structure that drives Soros’ Shadow Party.

The 12-day conference of the International Telecommunications Union, a 157-year-old organization that's now an arm of the United Nations, largely pits revenue-seeking developing countries and authoritarian regimes that want more control over Internet content against U.S. policymakers and private Net companies that prefer the status quo. While specifics of some of the most contentious proposals remain secret, leaked drafts show that Russia is seeking rules giving individual countries broad permission to shape the content and structure of the Internet within their borders, while a group of Arab countries is advocating universal identification of Internet users. Some developing countries and telecom providers, meanwhile, want to make content providers pay for Internet transmission. Fundamentally, most of the 193 countries in the ITU seem eager to enshrine the idea that the U.N. agency, rather than today's hodgepodge of private companies and nonprofit groups, should govern the Internet.