On January 9th of 2007, Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine and Democrat Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota introduced a second attempt at a bill requiring strict Net Neutrality from Internet service providers. Both Senators had worked together on 2006’s Internet Freedom Preservation Act, an identical bill that failed to pass the Senate the first time around. Snowe was the only Republican to co-sponsor the bill alongside Sens. Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, Patrick Leahy, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.
Without Net Neutrality laws in place, service providers like AT&T and Verizon are able to prioritize content and services as they see fit. This includes the right to charge extra fees from companies like YouTube in order to ensure that their services are delivered faster. Companies that don’t pay the fees will risk having their content or services suffer from slower delivery rates or even blocked altogether.
Net Neutrality became a public issue when representatives of service providers started warning that they may begin charging for premium placement to ensure that they are making enough money off of the investments they have made in the Internet’s network structure. This announcement has caused numerous Internet companies and their high-profile supporters- including Vinton Cerf, widely known as the “Father of the Internet”- to start grassroots campaigns to promote attention to the issue of net neutrality in order to “save the internet”.
The Snowe-Dorgan bill would prohibit the blocking or degradation of any content or services except for security and other protective purposes for the consumer. Prioritization of content would only be allowed if all of that type of content is equally prioritized, and for no fee. This means that if a specialized system were put in place to allow for the faster delivery of YouTube content, all other websites based on user-generated videos would have to be delivered on that same specialized system, at no cost to them or the consumer.
As a part of the bill, companies will be required to offer standalone broadband service, meaning that while packaged deals of internet/tv/phone or any combination thereof will be allowed, but cannot be the only option.
While an opponent of Net Neutrality legislation, AT&T agreed to a provision in their merger with Bell South to maintain neutrality in their service. AT&T states that the decision was made because the FCC was deadlocked on the decision to allow the merger. This provision won them the merger, and they now practice net neutrality. The company, and the two Republican representatives of the FCC do not wish to see any broader applications of net neutrality.
2006’s version of the Net Neutrality bill died in the Senate Commerce Committee when it was voted to an 11-11 deadlock. The House version of the same bill was defeated with a 269-152 vote.
Rep. Edward Markey is expected to introduce his own Net Neutrality bill to the House of Representatives, which was controlled by the Republican majority when it was defeated on its first attempt. With a Democratic Party majority, the second attempt is being made in hopes of having a greater chance of passing this time around.
Hopefully, this time around, Congress will pass the Net Neutrality bills and secure the safety of equal representation on the Internet. The government’s intervention on the issue is being accused of stepping outside of its bounds and stifling business, but allowing service providers to degrade service or block content is flat-out censorship. The Internet is intended to be accessed by all consumers to its full and equal potential. We as consumers should not have to pick and choose which provider we want to sign with in order to experience more of the Internet, and still have it laid in front of us the way that the ISPs want us to experience it. From the viewpoint of an Internet-based company like Amazon.com, Google, or YouTube, if ISPs are allowed to go against net neutrality, their freedom to do business and access consumers is severely hindered based on the will of corporate decision makers who don’t own any actual rights to the system they are threatening to deprave. With the help of lawmakers who hold a respect for the rights of citizens, Net Neutrality laws will be passed in order to protect web service, and, as has been said before, “Save the Internet”.
Posted by mraneo 