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July 3, 2006 • VOL. 44, NO. 13 • Oakland, CA
The future of
the Internet:
Choosing sides on ‘net neutrality’
WASHINGTON
(CNS) -- Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and the ongoing debate
in Congress over “net neutrality” is just the latest example.
The U.S. bishops are for net neutrality. So are the Christian Coalition,
the Gun Owners of America and Amazon.com, the world’s largest online
retailer, as well as large Internet content providers such as Microsoft,
Google and Yahoo.
In the other corner are the Internet service providers -- large telephone
and cable companies -- whose lines are used by Internet content providers
on one end, and the citizenry represented by such groups as the U.S. bishops,
the Christian Coalition and the Gun Owners of America on the other end.
Net neutrality, short for network neutrality, is the current protocol
governing Internet traffic.
If an Internet user wants to look at any online site, he or she can access
it with roughly the same ease as anything else that’s online --
presuming the site’s host can smoothly direct whatever traffic comes
its way.
Current telecommunications law being rewritten in Congress makes no mention
of net neutrality as a standard. The Senate Commerce Committee was to
vote on a bill June 27; a House version of the bill, which contained no
net neutrality enforcement provisions, passed earlier in June.
“There is nothing to stop cable and phone companies from not allowing
you to access speech that they oppose!” said a June 12 “action
alert” e-mail from Christian Coalition president Roberta Combs.
“Under these new rules, an Internet service provider with a pro-choice
board of directors could decide that they will not allow a pro-life group
to have access to its network ... or allow you to access their information!”
Combs listed eight Republican senators as “top priority” contacts
on the issue, complete with fax numbers and the phone number of the Capitol
switchboard.
Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., chairman of the bishops’
Committee on Communications, using more measured tones in a May 23 letter
to each House member, said: “Unless there are in place protections
against Internet access providers’ control over content, noncommercial
religious speech on the Internet is threatened.”
Bishop Kicanas added, “The Internet was constructed as a unique
medium without the editorial control functions of broadcast television,
radio or cable television.
"The Internet is open to any speaker, commercial or noncommercial,
whether or not the speech is connected financially to the company providing
Internet access, whether it is popular or prophetic. Those characteristics
make the Internet critical to noncommercial religious speakers.”
Without a net neutrality mandate, an Internet service provider could,
in theory, charge premiums both to consumers who want to access certain
sites and to Internet content providers for speedy access to the sites
they control.
“It seems they want to double dip -- get paid by consumers so consumers
can access Web sites and get paid by Web sites so Web sites can access
consumers,” said Federal Communications Commission member Michael
Copps, a Catholic, in an April 3 policy speech in the Washington suburb
of Silver Spring, Md.
There are other dangers if net neutrality vanishes, according to a June
13 essay in The Hill, a Capitol Hill daily newspaper, written by Jenny
Toomey and Michael Bracy, executive director and policy director, respectively,
of the Future of Music Coalition.
“What would happen if Sony paid Comcast so that sonymusic.com would
run faster than iTunes or, more important, faster than cdbaby.com -- where
over 135,000 indie artists sell their music?” they asked.
“Would a new form of Internet payola emerge, with large Internet
content providers striking business deals with the dominant Internet service
providers?”
