Grayson Sides With Telecoms On Net Neutrality. Franken says foremost free speech issue of our time.

[jefferson_dem]

Alan Grayson Sides With Telecoms On Net Neutrality
First Posted: 08- 5-10 04:00 PM | Updated: 08- 5-10 05:35 PM

Rep. Alan Grayson shocked his passionate followers in the progressive online community this week when he aligned himself with the telecom industry and pressured the Federal Communications Commission not to write regulations protecting the principle of net neutrality.

Conservative bloggers immediately embraced Grayson, with Andrew Breitbart's Big Government mockingly offering him a "very warm welcome to the party," while reminding readers that he "is about as rabid a Leftist partisan as there is in Congress." Both Big Government and RedState.com gleefully noted that Grayson employs Matt Stoller, a former prominent blogger and leading net neutrality advocate.

On Monday, Google is expected to announce a deal with Verizon that would end net neutrality and allow telecom companies to slow down particular websites and charge fees similar to cable for access to certain sites on mobile devices. (There is increasingly little difference between mobile and stationary devices.) Verizon, under the agreement being negotiated, could crush blogs, companies or political candidates by slowing down their sites.

"The deal marks the beginning of the end of the Internet as you know it," responded Josh Silver, president of Free Press, an advocate of net neutrality.

So why does Grayson, a progressive champion, oppose allowing the FCC to regulate the Internet and implement net neutrality rules? The Orlando Democrat says that he is in favor of net neutrality and that his alliance with the telecom industry is a coincidental case of "strange bedfellows."

"I say in the letter that I support the policy of net neutrality. I don't know how I could be more explicit than that," he told HuffPost. "There is a question, though, of how to reach that conclusion, and it's a legitimate question. My own feeling is that we should not allow a matter like this to be resolved by regulation, because regulations can be changed very easily. We saw this all the time with the Bush administration. I think it is preferable to have the principle of net neutrality enshrined in statute."

<SNIP>

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/05/alan-grayson-sides-with-t_n_672313.html

Net neutrality is foremost free speech issue of our time
By Al Franken, Special to CNN

(CNN) -- If we learned that the government was planning to limit our First Amendment rights, we'd be outraged. After all, our right to be heard is fundamental to our democracy.

Well, our free speech rights are under assault -- not from the government but from corporations seeking to control the flow of information in America.

If that scares you as much as it scares me, then you need to care about net neutrality.

"Net neutrality" sounds arcane, but it's fundamental to free speech. The internet today is an open marketplace. If you have a product, you can sell it. If you have an opinion, you can blog about it. If you have an idea, you can share it with the world.

And no matter who you are -- a corporation selling a new widget, a senator making a political argument or just a Minnesotan sharing a funny cat video -- you have equal access to that marketplace.

An e-mail from your mom comes in just as fast as a bill notification from your bank. You're reading this op-ed online; it'll load just as fast as a blog post criticizing it. That's what we mean by net neutrality.

But telecommunications companies want to be able to set up a special high-speed lane just for the corporations that can pay for it. You won't know why the internet retail behemoth loads faster than the mom-and-pop shop, but after a while you may get frustrated and do all of your shopping at the faster site. Maybe the gatekeepers will discriminate based on who pays them more. Maybe they will discriminate based on whose political point of view conforms to their bottom line.

<SNIP>

http://us.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/08/05/franken.net.neutrality/index.html

[annabanana]

1. Al Franken's petition here:

http://www.alfranken.com/index.php/splash/netneutrality_vid/

[w4rma]

2. Nobody's perfect. He's got to suck at something. (nt)

[boppers]

3. Al needs an education. Looks like Grayson got one.

The "high speed" lanes have always existed... and have been formalized on the internet since the early 90's, actually. Did blogging stop? Did SPAM cease to exist? Nope. The reason is simple: almost all traffic is delivered at "best effort" pricing, and few people wanted to pay for the "high speed" traffic prices.

[w4rma]

4. You need an education, boppers. We aren't yet paying ISPs to access "premium" sites.

Then again, you may be here for the purpose of promoting propaganda, in which case you need an ethics education, instead.

[boppers]

5. You are not paying for the speed you're "getting" to all sites.

I could be wrong, you could be paying 20 bucks a month to use a phone modem, and surfing along at 56K. Or you could actually be paying several thousand dollars a month to get high speed dedicated lines to your preferred sites.

What's much more likely is that you, and many of your area neighbors, are all chipping in to get access to use that speed, some of the time, to get to sites deemed "safe enough" by your ISP (which is likely almost all of them). The whole "premium" sites is bullshit left over from people comparing their television to the internet, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

[lib2DaBone]

6. Sounds like Grayson supports Net Neutrality....

.. and he doesn't support the FCC.. because he knows that partisan political appointees run the FCC.

The FCC.. another key government agency that can be purchased by the highest bidder.

[NYC_SKP]

7. kick (nt)

[Enthusiast]

8. K&R

But Alan, net neutrality is not going to be 'enshrined in statute'. And it needs to be protected now!