PDF Warning [pdf] for the final Stimulus Bill.
Browsing Posts tagged Net Neutrality
We were told there wasn’t going to be any pork into the Stimulus Bill. Then, we are told that there is a health care initiative being included. Now, Senator Diane Feinstein wants provisions added to the bill that will destroy net neutrality.
US Senator Dianne Feinstein hopes to update President Barack Obama’s $838bn economic stimulus package so that American ISPs can deter child pornography, copyright infringement, and other unlawful activity by way of “reasonable network management.”
According to Public Knowledge, Feinstein’s network management amendment did not find a home in the stimulus bill that landed on the Senate floor. But lobbyists speaking with the Washington DC-based internet watchdog said that California’s senior Senator is now hoping to insert this language via conference committee – a House-Senate pow-wow were bill disputes are resolved.
“This is the most backdoor of all the backdoor ways of doing things,” Public Knowledge’s Art Brodsky told The Reg. “Conference committees are notorious for being the most opaque of all legislative processes.”
Obama’s stimulus bill sets aside between $6bn and $9bn for expanding American broadband into rural areas, and Senator Feinstein hopes to (PDF) augment this Broadband Technology Opportunities Program so that it “allows for reasonable network management practices such as deterring unlawful activity, including child pornography and copyright infringement.”
You need to fight this now by faxing Senator Feinstein or the three other members of the committee.
The House Democrats were supposed to be working on a $825 billion stimulus bill, but they just couldn’t keep their meddling hands out of it and managed to slip in net neutrality stipulations as well.
The House is trying to slip net neutrality in through the back door, while no one is looking. After all, are you going to vote against helping stimulate the economy? Having achieved this goal once before with the REAL-ID Act, they are planning to do their own thing again, citizens be damned.
The catch is that the federal largesse comes with Net neutrality strings attached. The Commerce Department must ensure that the recipients “adhere to” the Federal Communications Commission’s 2005 broadband policy statement (PDF)–which the FCC said at the time was advisory and “not enforceable,” and has become the subject of a lawsuit before a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.
One interpretation of the “adhere to” requirement is that a company like AT&T, Verizon, or Comcast that takes “stimulus” dollars to deploy broadband in, say, Nebraska must abide by these rules nationwide. (It’s rather like the state of Nebraska demanding that a broadband provider filter out porn nationwide in exchange for a lucrative government contract.)
Except that is not what net neutrality is like. Net neutrality is about equal access for all. It guarantees free and equal competitive markets on the Internet. Blocking anything is completely against what net neutrality is.
In addition, recipients must operate broadband and high-speed wireless networks on an “open access basis.” The FCC, soon to be under Democratic control, is charged with deciding what that means. Congress didn’t see fit to include a definition.
We will now have a law on the books, whereby the definition of said law will be determined at a later date.
If the Internet is naturally neutral by design, why should we allow politicians to screw it up?
