INTERNET TIME

Rep. Ed Markey formally introduced the Network Neutrality Act of 2006 today. Read the whole thing here.

Mr. Speaker, from the beginning of Internet time until August of 2005, the Internet’s nondiscriminatory nature was safeguarded from being compromised by Federal Communications Commission rules that required nondiscriminatory treatment by telecommunications carriers. In other words, no commercial telecommunications carrier could engage in discriminatory conduct regarding Internet traffic and Internet access because it was prohibited by law.

In August of 2005, however, the Federal Communications Commission re-classified broadband access to the Internet in a way which removed such legal protections. And how did the industry respond to this change? Just a few weeks after the FCC removed the Internet’s protections, the Chairman of then-SBC Communications made the following statement in a November 7th Business Week interview: “Now what they [Google, Yahoo, MSN] would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there’s going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they’re using. . . .”

…

Do we really have to wait till these corporate giants divide and conquer the open architecture of the Internet to make that against the law? These telephone company executives are telling us that they intend to discriminate in the prioritization of bits and to discriminate in the offering of “quality of service” functions – for a new fee, a new broadband bottleneck toll – to access high bandwidth customers, we cannot afford to wait until they actually start doing that before we step in to stop it.

You can read the actual content of the bill here. If you care about the internet, here are some resources to get involved, courtesy of Pachacutec:

1. SIGN a Net Neutrality petition to Congress.

2. CALL Congress now. Especially, tell your representatives in the House to support Markey’s Net Neutrality Act of 2006, but educate your senators on this issue too, as the fight will soon move there.

3. WRITE A LETTER to Congress.

4. MYSPACE: Add “Save the Internet” as a friend.

5. Check out the BLOG RESOURCES about this issue, including “Save the Internet” logo.

6. VISIT the SavetheInternet coalition Web site for more information.