[Ecommerce] House Ignores Public, Sells Out the Internet

[Manon Ress]

Yesterday afternoon, a House committee voted to strip strong Net
Neutrality provisions from a bill moving through Congress.

The COPE Act next moves from the committee to a full House vote. The
Senate Commerce Committee is expected to take up Net Neutrality
legislation in the coming weeks.

More on net neutrality, the coalition and what you can do at:

http://www.savetheinternet.com/=press3

Free Press Press Release:

Contact:
Craig Aaron
Communications Director, Free Press
caaron(at)freepress.net
(202) 265-1490 ext 25

Trevor Fitzgibbon
Fenton Communications
tfitzgibbon(at)fenton.com
(202) 246-5303


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."

Groups on the right and left have banded together, and hundreds of
bloggers from across the political spectrum have galvanized behind
this cause, with more than 500 blogs pointing their readers to
SavetheInternet.com.

"It's shocking that the House continues to deny the will of the
people on an issue that affects everyone so directly -- protecting
the free and open Internet," said Eli Pariser, Executive Director of
MoveOn.org Civic Action. "Our bipartisan coalition will rally the
online community like it's never been rallied before, and together
the public will overturn today's enormous blow to the freedom
principle that's made the Internet great."

"Commerce and free expression on the Internet have flourished because
it's available to everyone on the same basis," said Glenn Reynolds,
of libertarian blog Instapundit.com. "That's how it should continue
to be."

The SavetheInternet.com coalition includes: Gun Owners of America,
MoveOn.org Civic Action, Craig Newmark of Craigslist, Glenn Reynolds
(a.k.a. libertarian blogger Instapundit), Parents Television Council,
United Church of Christ, the American Library Association, the
Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Common Cause, Public
Knowledge, and other major public interest groups. The coalition is
spearheaded by Free Press, a national, nonpartisan group focused on
media reform and Internet policy issues. The rapidly expanding list
of groups supporting Internet freedom is available at
www.SavetheInternet.com.
"The diversity of this coalition underscores the importance of this
issue," said Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet and
Google's Chief Internet Evangelist. "When the Internet started, you
didn't have to get permission to start companies. You just got on the
Net and started your idea."
The COPE Act next moves from the committee to a full House vote. The
Senate Commerce Committee is expected to take up Net Neutrality
legislation in the coming weeks.

"The House vote today ignores a groundswell of popular support for
Internet freedom," said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press. "We
hope that the full House will resist the big telecom companies and
reject the bill. But we look to the Senate to restore meaningful
protections for net neutrality and ensure that the Internet remains
open to unlimited economic innovation, civic involvement and free
speech."

For more information, visit www.SavetheInternet.com

************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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