[Infowarrior] - Lessig: No Tolls on The Internet

[Richard Forno]

No Tolls on The Internet

By Lawrence Lessig and Robert W. McChesney
Thursday, June 8, 2006; A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/07/AR2006060702
108_pf.html

Congress is about to cast a historic vote on the future of the Internet. It
will decide whether the Internet remains a free and open technology
fostering innovation, economic growth and democratic communication, or
instead becomes the property of cable and phone companies that can put toll
booths at every on-ramp and exit on the information superhighway.

At the center of the debate is the most important public policy you've
probably never heard of: "network neutrality." Net neutrality means simply
that all like Internet content must be treated alike and move at the same
speed over the network. The owners of the Internet's wires cannot
discriminate. This is the simple but brilliant "end-to-end" design of the
Internet that has made it such a powerful force for economic and social
good: All of the intelligence and control is held by producers and users,
not the networks that connect them.

The protections that guaranteed network neutrality have been law since the
birth of the Internet -- right up until last year, when the Federal
Communications Commission eliminated the rules that kept cable and phone
companies from discriminating against content providers. This triggered a
wave of announcements from phone company chief executives that they plan to
do exactly that.

Now Congress faces a legislative decision. Will we reinstate net neutrality
and keep the Internet free? Or will we let it die at the hands of network
owners itching to become content gatekeepers? The implications of
permanently losing network neutrality could not be more serious. The current
legislation, backed by companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, would
allow the firms to create different tiers of online service. They would be
able to sell access to the express lane to deep-pocketed corporations and
relegate everyone else to the digital equivalent of a winding dirt road.
Worse still, these gatekeepers would determine who gets premium treatment
and who doesn't.

Their idea is to stand between the content provider and the consumer,
demanding a toll to guarantee quality delivery. It's what Timothy Wu, an
Internet policy expert at Columbia University, calls "the Tony Soprano
business model": By extorting protection money from every Web site -- from
the smallest blogger to Google -- network owners would earn huge profits.
Meanwhile, they could slow or even block the Web sites and services of their
competitors or those who refuse to pay up. They'd like Congress to "trust
them" to behave.

Without net neutrality, the Internet would start to look like cable TV. A
handful of massive companies would control access and distribution of
content, deciding what you get to see and how much it costs. Major
industries such as health care, finance, retailing and gambling would face
huge tariffs for fast, secure Internet use -- all subject to discriminatory
and exclusive dealmaking with telephone and cable giants.

We would lose the opportunity to vastly expand access and distribution of
independent news and community information through broadband television.
More than 60 percent of Web content is created by regular people, not
corporations. How will this innovation and production thrive if creators
must seek permission from a cartel of network owners?

The smell of windfall profits is in the air in Washington. The phone
companies are pulling out all the stops to legislate themselves monopoly
power. They're spending tens of millions of dollars on inside-the-Beltway
print, radio and TV ads; high-priced lobbyists; coin-operated think tanks;
and sham "Astroturf" groups -- fake grass-roots operations with such
Orwellian names as Hands Off the Internet and NetCompetition.org.

They're opposed by a real grass-roots coalition of more than 700 groups,
5,000 bloggers and 750,000 individual Americans who have rallied in support
of net neutrality at http://www.savetheinternet.com/ . The coalition is left
and right, commercial and noncommercial, public and private. Supporters
include the Christian Coalition of America, MoveOn.org, National Religious
Broadcasters, the Service Employees International Union, the American
Library Association, AARP and nearly every consumer group. It includes the
founders of the Internet, the brand names of Silicon Valley, and a bloc of
retailers, innovators and entrepreneurs. Coalitions of such breadth, depth
and purpose are rare in contemporary politics.

Most of the great innovators in the history of the Internet started out in
their garages with great ideas and little capital. This is no accident.
Network neutrality protections minimized control by the network owners,
maximized competition and invited outsiders in to innovate. Net neutrality
guaranteed a free and competitive market for Internet content. The benefits
are extraordinary and undeniable.

Congress is deciding on the fate of the Internet. The question before it is
simple: Should the Internet be handed over to the handful of cable and
telephone companies that control online access for 98 percent of the
broadband market? Only a Congress besieged by high-priced telecom lobbyists
and stuffed with campaign contributions could possibly even consider such an
absurd act.

People are waking up to what's at stake, and their voices are growing louder
by the day. As millions of citizens learn the facts, the message to Congress
is clear: Save the Internet.

Lawrence Lessig is a law professor at Stanford University and founder of the
Center for Internet and Society. Robert W. McChesney is a communications
professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and co-founder
of the media reform group Free Press.