Much work to be done to preserve net neutrality

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A few topics are guaranteed to light up a journalist's e-mail inbox. President Bush, the war, race and abandoned puppies always result in a morning of explaining yourself to the irate and thanking supportive readers.

I have added another item to the topics of passion: network neutrality. It's a real snoozer of a name, but one that hits people between the eyes, making them knit their brows in worry. I have written about the issue a number of times the past year. Always, the e-mails flow.

The reaction to net neutrality was personal and visceral at the National Conference for Media Reform. It was instructive for me to see the people behind the rapidly growing movement at the conference put on by Free Press, an organization that works on media policy and pushes the public to become informed participants in media debate.

What I learned was that the telecoms, cable companies and their hired guns in Washington, D.C., are in danger of losing their bid to control the Internet. The cablecom beast believes because it owns the pipes through which the Internet courses, it should be able to charge Web sites or companies to pay so its Web pages load faster.

This would be a system ripe for abuse by network providers such as AT&T and Comcast. Not only could the companies ensure their content zips along, they could slow down competition and stifle creative advances by putting monetary barriers in the way of start-ups.

The idea of a two-tiered system rattled Internet users. The wave of resistance was swift once it became clear an open Internet was in jeopardy. What started as an obscure flutter in cyberspace has evolved into a full-blown movement — a movement that stymied what the biggies thought was going to be an easy reworking of telecommunications law.

I believe the net-neutrality movement and its horde of bloggers, countless videos posted on YouTube, and groups such as Free Press and Consumers Union are what prevented Congress from passing the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006.

Free Press' only miscalculation on net neutrality was in not using a bigger room for the panel dealing with the topic. Almost every seat in the medium-sized conference room was filled. The faithful were not disappointed.

The first panelist to speak was Columbia University law professor Tim Wu. Wu's pro-net-neutrality stance is not only backed up by his scholarly work, but by his former life in the telecom industry. This experience gave him foresight of the looming battle.

"We were trying to sell technologies that would allow service providers to discriminate as to what is carried on the network," Wu said. "Notably, we were trying to sell the exact same technologies to Verizon and AT&T as we were trying to sell to the Chinese government."

Wu's powerful presentation was backed up by Matt Stoller of MyDD.com. Stoller might be the most visible blogger on the issue. In an exchange on Stoller's blog, he slapped down President Clinton's former press secretary Mike McCurry, who now lobbies for the telecoms.

Stoller put into perspective the failure of Congress to pass a new telecom bill because of net neutrality and AT&T having to agree to neutrality for two years so its merger with BellSouth would be approved.

"We had a debate in the public domain about whether the government should regulate the Internet. We won. That is a huge change," Stoller said.

There is much work to be done, as successful and productive as the past year has been for the movement. A net-neutrality bill has been introduced in the Senate by Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Brian Dorgan, D-North Dakota.

To succeed, this bill is going to need the support given to the cause last year. Letters need to be sent to Congress in support of the Snowe/Dorgan bill, and the Internet must continue to be utilized to save itself.

"It's a very obscure issue," Wu said. "If we don't start writing about it or noticing what is going on, it's going to come out of nowhere."

Ryan Blethen's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is rblethen@seattletimes.com