« Interview: Craig Aaron, Save The Internet | Main | CapitolLink: Blogger Outreach On 'Net Neutrality' »

Anything But Neutral On 'Net Neutrality'

The surest way to incite the collective hostility of bloggers is to seek limits on how they use their medium of choice: the Internet.

The Federal Election Commission learned that lesson last year when word spread of potential campaign regulations for blogs -- an idea the agency largely abandoned as the result of a blog swarm. Now bloggers have major communications companies and their congressional allies in their sights over an obscure concept known as "network neutrality."

The bloggers are stinging their targets relentlessly. They have lobbied members of Congress to support their cause; they have ridiculed and condemned those who don't; and they have venomously derided one industry spokesman as a "mouthpiece for deception."

"This is something bloggers care about because the free Internet is a key principle for the blogosphere," said Matt Stoller of MyDD, who has written frequently about the issue in recent weeks.

Network neutrality is an important aspect of the ongoing debate over reforming telecommunications law for the first time in a decade. Most observers agree that changes are long overdue in an era when high-speed Web connections, Internet telephony, online video and other services have revolutionized communications.

But they disagree about whether the few firms that control most broadband pipes should have virtually free reign over those lines. Companies like AT&T want the right to charge more for certain high-speed services, but major technology companies like Amazon.com, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! are insisting on equal treatment, or network neutrality.

Hundreds of bloggers agree with the net neutrality crowd, and they quickly have become a significant presence in the debate.

In their fight against the FEC, more than 1,800 bloggers spontaneously organized as The Online Coalition to make their case. This time, they are being aggressively courted by Save The Internet, a new group whose charter members include blogs like the popular Instapundit and Personal Democracy Forum.

Save The Internet is recruiting "a corps of bloggers ... to win the campaign for Internet freedom" and offers them a toolkit for posting logos, video and other information. The effort thus far has generated more than 3,000 links and 5,100 "friends" at MySpace, a social-networking site popular among many bloggers.

Save the Internet also has a blog of its own. So do other pro-neutrality groups, including Common Cause, Public Knowledge and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. And Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey, a key House advocate of neutrality, has blogged at both The Agonist and The Huffington Post.

The telecom and cable industries have a presence in the blogosphere, too. A new industry-backed forum called NetCompetition, for instance, is using its blog to challenge the arguments for net neutrality. "I approached the companies and associations about the idea," said Scott Cleland of the Precursor research and consulting firm, "and there was near universal, strong interest in promoting a more substantive debate on the merits. It came together in just a few weeks."

The site includes links to Save the Internet and other pro-neutrality forces.

Mike McCurry, once a spokesman for former President Clinton and now a co-chairman of Hands Off The Internet, also has blogged at The Huffington Post and commented at MyDD. But the reaction to McCurry's outreach proves that the momentum in the blogosphere is clearly with proponents of network neutrality.

He is subjected to verbal beatings every time he writes. "He's simply lying about the issue," Stoller said in an e-mail interview when speaking of McCurry, a fellow Democrat. "And thousands of people are as outraged as I am about this."

Whether thousands are outraged is an open question, but enough bloggers have joined the swarm over network neutrality to influence the political dynamic. As Stoller noted, House Democrats Eliot Engel of New York and Bart Stupak of Michigan changed their votes from subcommittee to full committee, and last week's planned House floor debate on the telecom bill was delayed. "It's always hard to tell if it was the blogs that did it," Stoller said, "but I think we had an effect."

"Bloggers have started developing friendships with offices of various congressmen on Capitol Hill and have the potential to get face time and politely express their views, when they otherwise might not be able to," added Erick-Woods Erickson, a director at RedState and the voice behind Broadband Blog.

He said that could be especially true in the Senate or later in the legislative process. "If what I'm hearing is true," Erickson said, "I suspect this will go to conference and a compromise will be reached. It's during that time that I think bloggers will be most effective."

Cleland acknowledged that proponents of net neutrality "have taken the issue to the blogging community first and have established a first-impression advantage in this debate." But he and others in the industry who believe that open competition is "the best way to guard a free and open Internet" are convinced that at least some bloggers can be swayed.

"As people are more thoughtful on this and begin to hear both sides, we believe they will see it as a series of trade-offs that have been made and will continue to be made -- and that it's not a black-and-white issue," Cleland said. Of bloggers in particular, he noted that they "are a freedom-loving crowd" who will come to realize that "competition ensures a much greater diffusion of power and is a better check and balance on the Internet than government."

Posted by Danny | 07:08 AM