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An Appeal To Blog Swarm Sen. Inouye

The blogosphere has been an important battlefield in the debate over network neutrality for nearly two years but without any significant victories for people who want the government to force the owners of high-speed Internet networks to treat all content equally. That doesn't keep net neutrality backers from trying to connect to the power of the blog, though.

The advocacy group Public Knowledge is the latest to try, as noted this morning in Technology Daily:

The leader of a watchdog group on Wednesday urged bloggers to target the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee over his failure to advance legislation that would prohibit high-speed Internet network operators from charging special access rates to content providers.

Multichannel News reports that Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn called on online activists to take Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, to task over his failure to advance so-called network neutrality legislation. "Sen. Inouye, while he seems to be favorably inclined toward net neutrality, has just done nothing about it this entire Congress," she said. "So he, in my mind, is the number one target because he controls the agenda."

An Inouye spokesman did not comment.

The call to blog swarm Inouye hasn't had time to take root yet, but Matt Stoller at Open Left reported last month that there have been some "Major Conversions On Net Neutrality" off Capitol Hill. Those kinds of conversions, of course, won't do the cause much good seeing as how action on the Hill is what folks like Sohn and Stoller want.

Open Left, by the way, is now a good place to follow one side of the discussion on net neutrality, as Stoller has been one of the most active bloggers on the subject. The target of his ire on net neutrality thus far has been on the House side: Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey, who chairs the Energy and Commerce Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee.

The Precursor Blog, meanwhile, presents the other side of the debate. Patrick Woerner, a graduate student at Rutgers University, has a relatively new blog dedicated to exploring the subject objectively. And techRepublican recently served as a forum for two conservatives to debate the pros and cons of net neutrality.

UPDATE: Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge said in an e-mail and attached letter to me that the Multichannel News story was "vastly inaccurate" and "completely misinterpreted" Sohn's remarks.

He said Sohn's criticism of Inouye and other chairmen with jurisdiction over net neutrality were focused not on their failure to move legislation but on their failure to hold hearings on recent "abuses of power" by Internet providers like Comcast and Verizon Communications.

Posted by Danny | 09:16 AM

Comments

Fair post Danny.

I think both sides of the net neutrality argument want the same thing: a free and fair Internet which inspires entrepreneurs to create the latest and greatest technology tools for the consumer.

But perhaps some of us disagree about how exactly we help ensure that reality which we enjoy today?

It's worth Congress taking a closer look at for sure.

David

David All | 11.08.07 11:27 PM

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