Conservatives are trying to spread misinformation regarding this beautiful bill (HR3458) and even countered it with their own bill (HR3924).
H.R. 3458 aka Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 aka “Net Neutrality” is a bill proposed by the Democrats to make it unlawful for ISP companies to discriminate lawful websites, lawful internet contents and lawful internet applications. This bill requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to enforce this neutrality, and to make sure that ISP companies do not violate the freedom we enjoy now being able to visit any lawful websiteS we want and to use any lawful applications we want to use.
For those who do not understand, I will make an example.
Let’s say that you hired a driver to drive you where ever you want to go. And you are paying him a monthly salary to do so. One day you wanted to go to Burger King, and you asked your driver to drive for you. (Remember that you are paying him a monthly salary to do this for you.) Your driver says to you, “Sorry I can’t take you to Burger King”, you will of course, ask why. Your driver will simply answer, coz Burger King didn’t pay me.
Basically with this bill, it will prohibit your driver whom you paid, to discriminate or decide which places you can and cannot go. Since you are already paying him to drive you, why would Burger King or your destination place have to pay him too? Not only do they get to tell you which place you can go, they also get to say “well McDonalds pays me $100 while Burger King only pays me $50, so even if you want to go to Burger King, I’ll take you to McDonalds instead, but if you insist you’ll have to wait for 6 hours before I can drive you there.”
The driver I am talking about are the ISP companies. This bill will prohibit these ISP companies who already made public statements that they should be able to charge websites or application providers for using their “pipes”. First of all, websites are not using their “pipes”. Consumers are already paying them to be able to access the websites they want to visit. These websites are just sitting there waiting for you to visit them just as Burger King would. These ISP companies should not be able to limit which websites you can go. And this is exactly what Net Neutrality is all about.
On the other hand, GOP proposed a bill that is against Net Neutrality, saying FCC should be stopped from trying to regulate the internet. The truth is FCC is not regulating the internet, they want to regulate the ISPs to PREVENT them from controlling which websites you can or cannot go or which internet application you can or cannot use.
You do not believe that these ISPs want to control the internet? Well read their public statements below.
William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc. (Source: Washington Post)
Former AT&T Chief Ed Whitacre
Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there’s going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they’re using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? (Source: BusinessWeek)
Verizon (Ivan Seidenberg)
We have to make sure they don’t sit on our network and chew up our capacity. We need to pay for the pipe.
(Source: Wall Street Journal)
Again, these websites are not using their pipes, these websites are just sitting there waiting for you to visit, you are paying these ISP companies to provide you the means to access these websites. This will affect every Mom and Pop websites on the internet, where only those who can pay these ISPs gets to be shown. And while the rest of the world are free to visit Mom and Pop’s website, the citizens of the United States will not be able to visit the site, unless Mom and Pop pays these ISPs the amount of money they demand. I urge all thinking citizens of the US to support Net Neutrality, do not be partisan, this affects every US Citizens. Write your representatives to support the Net Neutrality Bill.
Read the bill proposed by the Democrats and compare it with the bill proposed by the Republicans, you can download them below.
Download the Bill proposed by the Democrats
Download the Bill proposed by the Republicans
