Here is the speech that Senator Al Franken gave yesterday August 19th at South High School in Minneapolis on why Net Neutrality is the First Amendment issue of our time and how Net Neutrality allows for a greater variety of voices online. [Transcript Below]
>>Mr. Franken:
Net Neutrality is the first amendment issue of our time….unless its freedom of religion, which I thought up until last week we had kind of worked out.
Today, a blog can load as fast as the Wall Street Journal and if the blog is good it can get more traffic than any media conglomerate, but if bigger companies can pay for faster priority internet access that blogger no longer has a shot, and these big companies know that when they pay for access they win. They want preferred treatment on the internet like the preferred treatment they get the rest of thier lives.
The chief technology officer for Bellsouth, he compared the internet to airline tickets he said this: “I can buy a coach standby ticket, or a first-class ticket.” He thinks thats what the internet should be like too. Well I don’t think we should make small businesses buy a first-class ticket to sell their goods online, and I don’t think we should make bloggers buy a first-class ticket for people to be able to hear their ideas.
As many of you have heard a few weeks ago Google and Verizon announced that they had developed a policy framework that would protect Net Neutrality. Well first of all they wrote framework so that it wouldn’t apply to wireless internet services, this means that the net theoretically would be neutral at home…some homes, but not on a wireless network or while you’re on the phone, and god, that’s not too big of a deal, whoever heard of using your internet on a phone?
The folks at Google and Verizon also wrote the framework so broadly that probably companies could pay for faster access for themselves even on the wired line internet. They left a huge loop hole for what they call “managed services” and then they want us to tie the hands of the FCC when it comes to regulating these services. Any internet service provider that decides to open up a fast lane internet of only certain websites or web applications and if the FCC had a problem with it…Google and Verizon’s plan has the power then to, get this, “publish a report”.
But, there is an even bigger issue here, it’s that when government doesn’t act…corporations will, and unlike government agencies which have a legal responsibility to protect American consumers, the only thing corporations care about, the only thing they have the legal duty to promote is their bottom line…that’s the purpose of a coporation, you could be sued for malfease if you’re the CEO of a corporation and you’re not pursuing your bottom line. So we can’t companies write the rules that they’re supposed to follow.
