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By Megan Tady
Media activists say Net access, local TV control at stake. New legislation that fails to enshrine principles of "network neutrality" also federalizes now-local control of TV providers and lets broadband companies leave underprivileged communities behind.
As Congress advances plans to overhaul rules for telecommunications companies, grassroots media groups are outraged over lawmakers' refusal to enshrine in legislation the principles of "network neutrality," which hold that all Web content should be equally accessible to a given user.
Less publicized portions of the bill could undermine local public-television access and allow Internet and cable providers to keep service out of less-profitable neighborhoods.
The Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement (COPE) Act of 2006, which passed the House by a vote of 321-101 on June 8,was created to update the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and address changes in voice, video and data services. It would streamline both phone and cable companies' ability to offer TV, voice and Internet services to consumers.
Critics are blasting the bill as a "give-away" to the telecommunications industry.
"The bill does nothing for the public interest," said Craig Aaron, communications officer for Free Press, the media-advocacy organization leading the "Save the Internet" campaign.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Joe Barton (R-Texas), the author of the bill, did not return The NewStandard's requests for an interview.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks federal campaign donations, telephone utilities firms that stand to gain from the bill have donated an average of $12 million per year in campaign contributions to Republicans and Democrats over the last four years.
The Senate's Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will vote on its own version of the bill, called the, Communications, Consumers' Choice and Broadband Deployment Act, in late June. Free Press says this bill only offers to study network neutrality without establishing any enforceable protections.
Media activists, however, are putting their hope in a separate act introduced by Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota), and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), which does provide protections for net neutrality.
The Fight for Network Neutrality
Network neutrality is the longstanding principle that Internet users should be able to access any content available on the Internet with equal convenience and without interference or speed discrimination from Internet service providers.
The COPE Act makes no provisions to enforce network neutrality, which has never been legally enforced, but only calls on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to execute its policy statement adopted in 2005. The policy says that consumers have the right to access Internet content of their choice, but it does not mention network neutrality or content speed. The FCC refused to comment to TNS.
Network neutrality proponents fear that without regulation, telecommunications companies will begin discriminating against some content as it comes over the wires to consumers. Companies that provide Internet connections - known as Internet service providers (ISPs) - could control how fast or slow users see information, giving priority to content from companies that pay special fees. Internet activists also fear that aside from the financial incentive to give priority to certain content, companies might have an ideological motive to slow information from dissident websites or sources that criticize certain corporations.
But while many groups are sounding the alarm that the COPE ACT will re-write the rules of the Internet, Evan Henshaw-Plath, an Internet consultant who has helped organize dozens of Independent Media Centers around the world, says people should keep in mind that net neutrality has existed for years without a legal mandate.
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