Save the Internet

[Ryan Pode]

http://www.savetheinternet.com/


Scott Kurtz of PVP:

I want to encourage everyone who reads PvP to learn as much as possible about the concept of Network Neutrality and about the new Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE) which is widely anticipated as being passed by congress. And I want to encourage you to act (see the bottom of this article for links on how you can act).

The basic shorthand of the situation is this: the internet currently benefits from network neutrality. The telecom companies, Internet service providers and cable companies can not discriminate against any data, traffic or programs running on their network. Everyone gets a fair shake and no preferential treatment. End users can reach all websites without interference from their provider. It allows the playing field to be level and encourages innovation. It's what allows the little guy to make his dreams reality.

But the telecom companies, and some in congress, want to change this. the new COPE act cuts out net neutrality. If the act passes, then the people who connect you to the internet get to decide which websites you see or don't see. They control which programs you can use over the net. They can determine how fast you get to certain websites. They control what the end user does and doesn't get to do on the internet.

If Google does not pay your service provider a fee, it could take you longer to reach their website than a competitor who did pay the fee. Worse than that, you could end up just not reaching Google at all or be redirected to the competitor's site instead.

It's scary, especially for those of us running an online business.

Looking beyond entertainment or my own ability to earn my income...what truly frightens me is how this new COPE act could affect our using utilities, reaching my bank, finding a doctor or a hospital, really important things. Recently a house guest of mine got food poisoning and the wife and I rushed to the internet to find the nearest emergency room to our house. If not for net neutrality, who knows what we would have found. Maybe I would never know there was an emergency room closer to home than the one at the hospital my ISP favors.

I've been reading as much as I can about this all week and I don't know. I mean, I just don't see how this could pass. If you were Google, would you pay the telecoms? These telecoms are trying desperately to stay alive. Google and Microsoft have more money than the telecoms do. If push came to shove, wouldn't they just buy up the telecoms? That's what a friend of mine suggests.

And aren't you more pissed at Congress than the telecoms about this whole thing? I thought that government was supposed to be there to serve the people. How could this possibly serve the people? It's so sad how these lobby groups can just push our elected leaders around. Where is the pragmatic leadership we need?



http://www.house.gov/writerep/ - locate your congressman and tell them.

http://www.isen.com/blog/ - David S. Isenberg is a former senior AT&T executive. He knows his stuff and he's got a lot of good information for you to consume on this.

[Khendon Sevon]

Just because it's being tossed around in Congress doesn't mean it'll actually see the light of day.

On top of that, it'll never work. You want to see what happens when you have millions of angry software engineers around the world? That's what this would be inviting.

Also, it hinders businesses that require internet research, blah, blah, etc, etc. It's just stupid.

It's not getting passed.

[Ryan Pode]

That's an optimistic viewpoint. Considering the big comapnies throw tons of money at Congress for lobbying purposes. Congress likes this money. A lot. In the committee vote of the House Energy and Commerce committe, the pro-passing of COPE was significantly stronger than the kill-it side. While yes, there would be many angry programmers and whatnot around the nation, unless they do something about it, as opposed to assuming, the Congressmen won't care.

[Khendon Sevon]

They won't do it because it's bad for business. If it gets passed, suddenly everyone will jump up and go "GHA!" (and cats and small animals will run scared from the sudden uproar).

They know this. They like their offices. The voters are the people who keep them in office.

[Ryan Pode]

It is, but this is the same congress that has no problem with wiretapping of the Amish for suspected terrorists.

[Pierce Tondry]

Wiretapping the AMISH?

Do the Amish even have any wires to tap?

[Ryan Pode]

Apparently. NSA suspected that terrorists were hiding out amongst the Amish. Take a moment to let that sink in. Exactly.

[Jedi Master Carr]

You would think big companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc would be against this though. They sure don't want to shell out more money on the internet. I think it won't pass, It could pass in the House, but it will fail in the Senate. I base that on the way the Senate is these days.

[Sanis Prent]

Carr, you do not understand the scope of companies in that market. Money is less of a practical utility than some means that destroys your competition. Being able to throw dollar bills at Uncle Sam to ride the world wide web's carpool lane really breaks it off sideways in just about anybody else who can't pay. If you're on the A-list, you've got it good, and the money spent on that option is put to very good use.

The Senate is like the house is, still controlled by big business republicans. It'll pass.

[Figrin D'an]

The elimination of 'net neutrality', at least within the US, is a greater threat than some people may believe. There is a ridiculous amount of money and power behind this from the telecoms, and they're lining the pockets of the members of Congress pushing for this. On the other side are people like Rep. Ed Markey, backed by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others, whom are fighting against the COPE act and has introduced a different bill to clearly define and protect 'net neutrality.'


I know some here don't really like to get involved in this type of political garbage, or even care to read about it, but I would seriously considering reading up on this. Net neutrality is what allows places like SWFans to be easily accessible by all of us and anyone looking for Star Wars related content online. While there is a lot of support from some major companies to keep net neutrality intact, there is enough money on the other side to force some sort of half-way compromise, which would be just as bad as losing net neutrality all together. This something that has to be fought, and aggressively.

And if you don't think something like this could ever get passed into law, one only needs to look at the Patriot Act and the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) to see how much terrible crap legislation Congress has put out in recent years.

[Park Kraken]

At the most, this could cause a civil war. At the very least, I would suspect, passing this bill would cause a major stock market crash.

[Vega Van-Derveld]

Hopefully this a) won't pass and if it does b) won't affect the UK :\

[Khendon Sevon]

Of course, if this does pass, there will be those ISPs that say "hey, we don't filter what you get. Use us instead!"

And we'll use them and the other companies will all go out of business for trying to dictate what we can see. It's supply and demand.

[Figrin D'an]

Originally posted by Khendon Sevon
Of course, if this does pass, there will be those ISPs that say "hey, we don't filter what you get. Use us instead!"

And we'll use them and the other companies will all go out of business for trying to dictate what we can see. It's supply and demand.


It's not that simple. The telecoms control the lines. Their big contention is, in essence, "It's our backbone, we should be able to dictate how it gets used." This is, of course, a massive pille of BS, because even though the telecoms put in the lines, they were ultimately paid for by the tax payers. If this passes, there won't be any more small ISPs to look to for service. We'll all be stuck with things like AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and Comcast pretty much, and they're all in bed together on this. And, your nice broadband connection that allows you to zip around the net, loading anything with ease, will suddenly only apply to the content that those big companies allow you to see. Everything else either gets slowed to a crawl or blocked completely, because the owners of said content didn't want to pay a tithe to the telecoms to have their content put in their express lane.

[Khendon Sevon]

It's not happening.

It's like saying, "let's turn the clock back on internet technology, we accidentally let broadband out of the bag, oops."

It would hurt the American economy more than ignoring these wailing companies' requests.

By the way, I didn't mean supply and demand, I meant competition. Early-morning-brain-linkage-failure.

[Jedi Master Carr]

Originally posted by Sanis Prent
Carr, you do not understand the scope of companies in that market. Money is less of a practical utility than some means that destroys your competition. Being able to throw dollar bills at Uncle Sam to ride the world wide web's carpool lane really breaks it off sideways in just about anybody else who can't pay. If you're on the A-list, you've got it good, and the money spent on that option is put to very good use.

The Senate is like the house is, still controlled by big business republicans. It'll pass.

The Senate is nearly 50-50 though. And if the Democrats show some backbone they could keep it ever coming up for a vote (by filabuster). Microsoft and Google and other sites like that back Democrats so that is why I feel it will less likely pass the senate. Hopefully, this will get delayed until after the next election because Democrats could retake the Senate and then this bill is dead, IMO.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006 (COPE) has apparently passed in the House.

Without the Markey Ammendment.




I figured this was a good enough reason to dredge this thread up.

[Sanis Prent]

It's still got to face a steep climb in the Senate, yes?

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I hope so.

There's also this:

Proponents of free Internet make progress (http://www.house.gov/inslee/issues/technology/free_internet_progress.html)

Net neutrality slated for consideration on House floor

8 June 2006

An Internet-freedom amendment offered by U.S. Reps. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Rick Boucher (D-Va.) will be considered in the House as part of comprehensive telecommunications-reform legislation.

Late last night, the House Rules Committee agreed to allow consideration of the measure, which would ban phone and cable companies from charging Web sites for faster data transmission, or blocking their online competitors’ content and services. Today, the full House also is expected to allow consideration of the Net-neutrality provision and other amendments when it sets parameters for debating the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement (COPE) Act of 2006, H.R. 5252. The House likely will vote on the COPE Act and its amendments this Friday, or early next week at the latest.

“All bits are created equal,” said Inslee, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who sponsored a similar Net-neutrality amendment when the COPE Act was considered by that panel at the subcommittee and full committee levels. “Protecting the open architecture of the Internet should be part of any update to our nation’s telecom laws.”

The measure was rejected on April 5 by an 8-23 margin in the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee. On April 26, it gained support in the full committee, but still was defeated by a vote of 22-34.

If the Net-neutrality amendment fails on the House floor, the issue could be taken up in a free-standing bill, such as the Network Neutrality Act of 2006, H.R. 5273, which was introduced in the House by Inslee, Markey, Eshoo and Boucher in early May.

[Shawn]

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6081882.html

The U.S. House of Representatives definitively rejected the concept of Net neutrality on Thursday, dealing a bitter blow to Internet companies like Amazon.com, eBay and Google that had engaged in a last-minute lobbying campaign to support it.

By a 269-152 vote that fell largely along party lines, the House Republican leadership mustered enough votes to reject a Democrat-backed amendment that would have enshrined stiff Net neutrality regulations into federal law and prevented broadband providers from treating some Internet sites differently from others.

Of the 421 House members who participated in the vote that took place around 6:30 p.m. PT, the vast majority of Net neutrality supporters were Democrats. Republicans represented most of the opposition.

[Jedi Master Carr]

Originally posted by Shawn
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6081882.html

The U.S. House of Representatives definitively rejected the concept of Net neutrality on Thursday, dealing a bitter blow to Internet companies like Amazon.com, eBay and Google that had engaged in a last-minute lobbying campaign to support it.

By a 269-152 vote that fell largely along party lines, the House Republican leadership mustered enough votes to reject a Democrat-backed amendment that would have enshrined stiff Net neutrality regulations into federal law and prevented broadband providers from treating some Internet sites differently from others.

Of the 421 House members who participated in the vote that took place around 6:30 p.m. PT, the vast majority of Net neutrality supporters were Democrats. Republicans represented most of the opposition.

Well the good thing is this won't pass the Senate. The Senate has more democrats and they the democrats there could filabuster it which needs 60 to overcome and the republicans could never muster 60 votes on this issue.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

I really hope you're right. There were some who I thought would oppose COPE, but it seemed ended up voting it in anyway.

Voting list for COPE:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll241.xml

Voting list for the Markey Amendment:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll239.xml


Because of this, the open doors that would be wide open for corporations to abuse worries me a bit. Just reading some of the doom and gloom predictions from SA is enough to make one turn into a ball of prickly frustration.


edit:

Start writing and/or calling your senators, folks :)
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

[Jedi Master Carr]

Well I see two possibilites. The Senate passing a different bill. The Republican senators there are more open minding, people like Spectar and MCaine are more mavericks and won't follow with this house bill, I think. If that happens I think both bills will get deadlocked until after the next election at that point who knows what will happen. The other possiblity is the democrats filbuster it and it dies then.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

If they do end up going the filibuster route, I vote we submit all of our old-old RP threads for them to read aloud. Maybe even a few Hell threads thrown in also.

[Jedi Master Carr]

Heh that be a cool idea.

[Firebird1]

I could write a six page paper on this for one of my classes, but I think that right now I'll be looking at just the facts.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

http://www.savetheinternet.com/ If you use this website it will automatically email the correct congressmen for your zip code for you. I did it, you should too! You can also email it on to everyone you know, which I also did.

[Jaime Tomahawk]

Email does not work. Pick up a pen and paper and WRITE the old fashioed way. It has much greater chance of being read and listened to

[Firebird1]

As of June 13, looks like this is going to the Senate....

http://news.com.com/Net+neutrality+fight+returns+to+Senate/2100-1028_3-6083297.html

Included in that article is a listing of the different bills in Commitee with what they mean for net neutrality.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Ask a ninja:
<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/H69eCYcDcuQ"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/H69eCYcDcuQ" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

[Khendon Sevon]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That was GENIUS!

Wow.