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Over the last few weeks, dozens of House members from both sides of the aisle have signed on to a lobbyist-driven letter advocating to give control of the Internet to Comcast and AT&T by preventing the FCC from protecting the Internet, broadband expansion efforts, and net neutrality. The misleading pack-of-lies letter has prompted some in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, to talk about revamping the 1996 Telecommunications Act with an eye towards giving the telecom companies and their lobbyists what they want.
Today on a conference call with bloggers, Speaker Pelosi threw cold water on those plans. Describing herself as a "big net neutrality advocate," she said that she has a hard time seeing how any legislation that guts net neutrality, the national broadband plan, or other Internet-focused priorities would get through Congress. The Speaker said:
I don’t know how many options they have unless they choose to work with Republicans, but it’s not going to be a Democratic initiative.
She added that making sure the Internet is open, free, and vibrant is a big priority for House Democrats:
Part of the innovation agenda I advocated for when I became Leader was universal broadband. We had hoped to get it done within five years. We just got the bill passed three years ago under President Bush, but we had no funding. Now we want to have the resources to take us to that place so we don’t have a disparity between urban and rural populations. Reclassification, net neutrality, universal access for every American, these are priorities for us. And we see it not in isolation but as part of a new propserity, as a job creator, to make America healthier, smarter and an international leader.
The 74 House Democrats and 37 Republicans advocating with their lobbyist letter to hand the Internet over to Comcast are clearly out of step with these priorities. Representative Jay Inslee, on the other hand, is circulating a letter supporting the FCC’s reclassification move to protect the Internet, a move Speaker Pelosi said she also "strongly supports."
The PCCC has a petition to sign in support of Inslee’s letter, as well as a tool to contact your Representative in the House to tell them to get on board. Today, Speaker Pelosi spoke about the need to educate Representatives on why this is so important, so get to it! Pick up the phone and call, and tell your elected official that you want the Internet protected from greedy corporations.
13 Comments
Some days, more than most lately, I am proud she is my Congresswoman.
She’s a treasure.
Nanci Pelosi is a treasure indeed. Let’s bury her.
The fact is that the letter circulated by Inslee was actually written by Ben Scott, the “policy director” of an astroturf lobbying group called Free Press. Free Press lobbies for Google’s corporate interests in DC — against privacy, against copyright, and for so-called “network neutrality” rules that would help monopolist Google while harming its potential competitors and the public. The FCC’s “reclassification” of broadband — a dubious legal maneuver intended to allow it to regulate the Net, which Congress has explicitly stated it does not want the FCC to regulate — would be a disaster for the public and for free expression. (Free Press has recently called upon the FCC to “monitor” “hate speech” on the Net — in short, to lay the groundwork for censorship of Internet content.)
The members of both houses of Congress who wrote the FCC asking it NOT to go along with the Google lobbyists’ agenda are representing the interests of the people who elected them. Want to protect the Internet from greedy corporations like Google? Call your representative and tell him or her NOT to support attempts by Google and the FCC to regulate the Net via so-called “network neutrality” regulation (which isn’t “neutral” at all; it favors corporate monopolist Google).
Wow dude, just wow. Do you work for Comcast? I have never heard an argument be so one sided against one corporation without even mentioning the other corporations involved in this open Internet fight.
This is basically a fight between Comcast and similar broadband providers vs. Google and similar website providers. If I had to pick which corporation I’d like to win, and my choices are Google and Comcast, I pick Google cause my cable service sucks ass but its either that or even more crappy DSL.
Oy, so many lies here it’s barely worth it. I’ll just say to others reading, that entire comment was pretty much false.
Brett, you bring out these same Americans for Prosperity-inspired talking points wherever you go.
1) That a member of Congress’ staff would take ideas and suggestions from various public interest groups as the basis for “Dear Colleague” letters is about as shocking as Captain Renault’s stunned surprise to discover
gambling going on in Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca.
Just who do you think drafted the letters loaded with industry talking points opposing broadband reclassification?
2) Free Press does not receive any Google money. You keep confusing them with another group. Free Press does not accept industry money. They are joined by Consumers Union, the folks that publish Consumer’s Reports, in supporting pro-consumer broadband reform. The opposition to Net Neutrality forces always have one thing in common — direct funding from the telecom industry. The fake grass is on the other side of this issue.
3) The only thing dubious was the incompetent Bush Administration official, Colin Powell’s son, who conjured up the stupid principle of calling broadband providers “information services.” That is what got us into this mess. Genachowski seeks to reclassify broadband as… wait for it… a “telecommunications service.” Oh my god. Now ask yourself who was trying to stick the square peg in the round hole — Powell or Genachowski. The DC Circuit Court already laughed one of the two concepts out of court. Guess which one?
4) Congress has never ordered the FCC not to regulate broadband. Several Republicans sent letters over to the FCC back when Powell was dealing with the issue saber-rattling over the matter. Most of them were either voted out of office or now sit in the minority. If Congress had passed a law explicitly telling the FCC not to regulate broadband, we wouldn’t be debating Genachowski’s reclassification today because it would be a moot point.
5) Those members of Congress who signed those letters to Genachowki have one thing in common — they have all cashed some pretty big checks from companies like AT&T, Verizon, and/or Comcast. Take Rep. Gene Green (D-AT&T). Everytime AT&T had a contentious issue for regulators or Congress to deal with, they upped Green’s next campaign contribution check. He got thousands when SBC and AT&T sought merger approval, even more when Congress last dealt with this issue in 2006/7, and he’s in for even bigger money for spearheading the letter you refer to. Maybe AT&T can buy him a swimming pool and fill it with cash and he can go wading through it.
When people consider this issue, it’s really a simple litmus test. Where do honest consumer groups, not funded by the telecom industry (or Google) stand on this issue? They stand with Net Neutrality.
Where do groups quietly funded by phone and cable companies stand? With always-pro-business hacks like Americans for Prosperity who sent Phil Kerpen on Fox News to bobblehead himself in agreement with Glenn Beck’s insane asylum, complete with paranoid chalkboard, to debate whether Net Neutrality represented Marxism or Maoism. In the end, all they proved is that we needed mental health parity in health care reform (and getting corporate cash out of public policy debates wouldn’t hurt either.)
Phillip Dampier
Editor, Stopthecap.com
No, I don’t work for Comcast. I operate a small, independent Internet service provider that competes with Comcast. And I’m dedicated to my customers’ best interests, which is why I take the time to oppose this incredibly harmful regulation. Comcast, AT&T, etc. are by no means lily white, but none of them can afford to alienate consumers because they are not monopolies; they have intense competition (from little guys like me as well as from the other big guys). Google, on the other hand, wantonly takes all of your personal information and feels free to publish it at will (as it did with Google Buzz, where it published users’ address books). It’s Google’s attempts at strengthening its monopolies that are of concern in the Internet world, and its campaign for “network neutrality” regulation is a longstanding effort (on which the company has spent tens of millions of dollars) to do just that. Wake up! An unbridled corporate monopoly is not your friend.
Net neutrality isn’t about strengthening Google’s monopolies. End of story.
i’m sure that’s why she helped engineer passage of the paa and the faa helping the bush administration spy on americans without a warrant and giving telco companies immunity for breaking the law when they help with the spying.
/s
Net neutrality is ALL ABOUT strengthening Google’s monopolies. That’s why all of the lobbying groups that are lobbying for it in Washington are supported by Google. There is no actual problem (no ISP has ever censored legal Internet content), so the only reason why there is a fuss is that Google’s lobbyists are trying to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt when none needs to exist.
Now I’m beginning to think you just don’t know anything about this issue. The entire court case of Comcast vs. the FCC that prompted the current battle over reclassification and net neutrality was about Comcast censoring legal web traffic.
Jason, now I *know* that you don’t understand this issue. Comcast never censored. In fact, during the hearing, it was demonstrated that Comcast’s network management system treated the King James Bible in exactly the same way it treated illegal downloads. On the other hand, Google willingly censors political speech; it has shut down entire Orkut discussion groups in India because the contained criticisms of political leaders. And Free Press — a Google lobbying group that’s arguing for “network neutrality” regulation — has just come out in favor of censoring the Net. See http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010/05/should-the-government-keep-tabs-on-hate-speech.ars
It’s the “network neutrality” lobbyists who are pro-censorship.
Ah, it’s Philip Dampier. The man who believes he’s so special that he’s entitled to Internet service below cost from any and all ISPs… and of course they are evil, evil, EVIL if they don’t give it to him. I once thought about starting a site called “Stop the Crap” to debunk his “Stop the Cap” site. But I then realized that anyone who couldn’t recognize that his site was simply the extended rant of a spoiled child was already completely beyond hope.
In any event, the thing that’s unique about the Inslee letter is that it actually bore the name of Google lobbyist Ben Scott in the metadata, proving that Scott wrote it. After that embarrassing gaffe, Scott had to make a quick exit from Google lobbying group Free Press (which won’t admit to its funding sources but has been proven to take money from both corporations and corporate foundations — and whose “Save the Internet” Web site gets thousands of dollars in free clickthroughs each month from Google). The Obama administration, which has received millions in contributions from Google, gave him one by hiring him into the Justice Department, in direct violation of its pledge not to hire lobbyists.
The proposed FCC “reclassification” is an unconstitutional attempt by an administrative agency to write its own law by taking a law which does not apply to broadband (in fact it specifically says that the Internet should remain free of Federal regulation; see 47 USC 230), claiming that the law applies anyway, cutting it apart, and pasting pieces of it together — like a ransom note — to say that the Commission has powers which a court recently told it that it simply does not have.
Sorry to burst your bubble, Philip, but we live in a country that’s governed by the rule of law — not by childish, selfish interests like yours. Nor is it governed by DC “astroturf” lobbying groups like Free Press, Public Knowledge, the New America Foundation, Open Internet Coalition, Future of Music Coalition (which opposes enforcement of copyrights on musicians’ work!) or the gaggle of others to whom Google gives many millions every year. (Monopolist Google’s political spending has already surpassed that of any of the telephone companies, and it has bought its lobbyists posts within the Administration — Andrew McLaughlin, for example, who went directly from being Google’s chief lobbyist to being the White House Internet czar.)
Fortunately, the majority of our representatives in Congress, as well as most of the public, have gotten wise to Google’s game. That’s why nearly 300 members of both houses of Congress are now opposing Google’s drive to buy itself favorable regulation — at the expense of the public interest. It doesn’t take Americans for Prosperity (which is a bit far right for my taste, though it happens to be correct on this issue) to point this out. It’s obvious to anyone who looks at what’s really going on.