It's a Lot of Power

On the verge of victory
Net neutrality uprising shows power of Internet as democratizing force

[from Working for Change]

A grassroots movement that barely existed five years ago is on the verge of triumphing over one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington.

The issue is net neutrality, the concept that, as with phone service, every Internet site is equally accessible to users. Net neutrality means that Joe's blog connects just as easily for users as CNN.com.

That's the Internet system hundreds of millions of people around the world (at least) have gotten used to. But here in the U.S., where many of the major Internet providers are based and the largest number of Internet users lives, the telecommunications lobby has spent some $200 million during this Congress to change all that.

What the telecom giants want instead is a tiered system, where they can charge large-scale users like Google, Yahoo, or Amazon.com fees in exchange for faster, more reliable access to their sites. CNN.com would load much faster than Joe's blog, and for that reason alone will be far more appealing to users. And that site being run by striking AT&T workers? You might not be able to access that at all.

The stakes are enormous. Anyone producing independent media would be at a huge disadvantage under such a system. It's not just existing web sites and blogs that would be affected. The biggest stakes are still to come. Within five years, much of the audience for print, radio, and video (including TV) will be online. A decade, and it will all be the same technology, worth uncounted billions each year to whichever companies control the service.

And the impact wouldn't stop at our shores. In the global South, where many poorer users gain access through Internet cafes and are charged by the minute for usage, slowly loading web sites (including most anything local) would price many people out of Internet access entirely.

The literally trillions of future dollars at stake are why the telecom giants spent so much money trying to ram a massive communications "reform" bill through Congress this year, with the abolition of net neutrality as its centerpiece. But then a funny thing happened.

Even with virtually no mainstream media coverage, word got out -- a testimony to the new power of the Internet and independent media. People noticed. And got angry. And organized. Though groups working to preserve net neutrality have been outspent by an unspeakable
factor, they've had public opinion on their side. Lots of it. Millions of Internet users spread the word, signed petitions, and besieged Congress with e-mails, faxes, phone calls, and visits -- so many that Congress got scared.

The upshot is that it looks like the Senate version of the communications bill this session (sponsored by Alaska's Ted Stevens, who already has had a rough time of it in recent months) is fatally stalled. Craig Aaron of FreePress.net, one of the major groups working to keep net neutrality, reports that the bill definitely won't be passed before the Nov. 7 midterm election.

He rates it unlikely the following lame duck session would take it on, either, and it definitely won't happen if, as now seems likely, Democrats win control of one or even both houses next month.

Defenders of free speech aren't out of the woods yet, of course. The telecommunications lobby would surely reload in January. And in the meantime, the FCC may rule as soon as today on whether a proposed merger between AT&T and BellSouth (leaving only AT&T, Verizon and Qwest as the country's main phone providers) should include a condition preserving net neutrality. Recent mergers between Verizon and MCI and between AT&T and SBC have included such a provision, but this time FCC Chair Kevin Martin may have the needed votes to avoid it. And it's no coincidence that among the telecom giants, AT&T has fought hardest and spent the most money trying to gut net neutrality.

Nonetheless, if Congress can't get its communications bill passed before January, it will have to start over -- potentially with a Democratic majority in at least one house that is far more sympathetic to net neutrality. Don't rest yet, but at this point, the prospects for preserving net neutrality are pretty good.

If that happens, it's a grass roots victory of historic proportions. Name the last time a lobby with that much power and money was stymied in its top legislative priority by a citizen movement. Offhand, I can't think of any examples at all. And this during the most corrupt, lobbyist-pliant Congress in recent American history.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome, just the fact that the tiered system isn't already signed into law represents a remarkable victory. It also represents something new: the power of the Internet, with little help from other media, to organize and mobilize many millions of users on short notice on an arcane topic.

That demonstrates the capacity for Internet users to become a huge democratizing force in our corrupt political culture. It's a lot of power, there to be harnessed.

Let's keep using it.