Act Now to Save Internet As We Know It

From SavetheInternet.com:
Trust AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth? AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth want us to trust that they’ll be good stewards of Internet freedom. Meanwhile, they’re selling out ordinary Americans to the National Security Agency. A report in Thursday’s USA Today tells how these three carriers secretly provided to the NSA the phone call records of tens of millions of people — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. These companies apparently have no qualms about betraying customer trust — or breaking federal law.

Now they are asking Congress to strip away Net Neutrality protections so they can become benevolent overlords of the World Wide Web.

According to the report, Section 222 of the Communications Act, prohibits companies from giving out information regarding their customers’ calling habits: whom a person calls, how often and what routes those calls take to reach their final destination, and who calls in to the number. When asked about their potentially illegal handover of this personal information, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth declined to comment, citing “national security matters.” (You can sign an ACLU petition to demand that these companies stop participating in the NSA spying program.)

Would you trust these corporations with your Internet?

Tom Tauke, Verizon executive vice president of public affairs, thinks you should. Earlier this week, he swore up and down that the telephone giant would never deny consumers access to what they want on the Internet. Tauke said that doing so would be “akin to Starbucks hatching a plan to secretly serve customers Folgers crystals.”

We’re not talking about coffee, Tom. Internet freedom is not a commodity for Verizon’s to sell off to the highest bidder. The only thing that Verizon is “secretly serving customers” is a lie about improved choices and innovation. And they’re asking Congress to pass a law that allows them to become gatekeepers to the information superhighway.

Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth maintain networks that reach into the homes and businesses of tens of millions of Americans. These companies built this access to our private lives — and the billions in revenues that come with it — on a “bedrock principle” of consumer protection.

Now, that they’ve sold out this trust to help the government monitor ordinary Americans, how credible are their claims that no Net Neutrality safeguards are necessary?

The New York Times wrote:

'Net neutrality' is a concept that is still unfamiliar to most Americans, but it keeps the Internet democratic. ... One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access and slower to navigate. Providers could also block access to sites they do not like.

This provided a powerful boost to Net Neutrality advocates, who are up against a multimillion dollar lobbying campaign by Internet operators like AT&T, who want more control over what Web sites people see and use online. A House committee has already voted to gut Net Neutrality, but the full House and Senate have yet to weigh in. Votes are expected in upcoming weeks.

Adding to that momentum, the SavetheInternet.com Coalition announced that in less than a week, its petition signatures to preserve Net Neutrality jumped from 250,000 to 500,000. The number of organizations participating in the coalition jumped from 50 to 400.

"The fight for Internet freedom is gaining big momentum," said Timothy Karr, campaign director of Free Press, a national, nonpartisan media reform and Internet policy group. "Every day, companies like AT&T and Comcast lose ground in their fight to end the free and open Internet that has revolutionized democratic participation and economic innovation."

The SavetheInternet.com coalition includes: Gun Owners of America, MoveOn.org, Craig Newmark of Craigslist, Glenn Reynolds (aka libertarian blogger Instapundit), Parents Television Council, American Library Association, United Church of Christ, Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Public Knowledge, and other major public interest groups. The coalition is spearheaded by Free Press.

"Without statutory network neutrality, there is nothing to prevent big telecom companies from injecting political bias into the very skeleton of modern communications," said Craig Fields, director of Internet operations for Gun Owners of America. "Whenever you see people on the left and right joining together about something Congress is getting ready to do, it's been my experience that what Congress is getting ready to do is basically un-American."

Actions that members of the public are being urged to take include:

Call Congress
Write a letter to Congress
MySpace: Add "Save the Internet" as a friend Blog on this issue
For more information

This post on Daily Kos describes what is at stake and what would happen should the telecoms win their battle to control the free internet, its content and what kind of access individual users can have. Democracy for New Mexico has signed up as a supporter of the Save the Internet effort. You can do the same as an individual, blogger or organization.