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Net Neutrality Loses a Round in the SenateSupporters of net neutrality were dealt a second blow June 28 when the Senate Commerce Committee rejected by an 11–11 tie vote a bill that mandated equal access to online content for all customers. The defeated Internet Freedom Preservation Act, sponsored by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.Dak.), would have prohibited network operators from charging tiered fees to either content providers or recipients of bandwidth-intensive applications such as digitized high-definition broadcasts.A coalition of internet users and website creators—including the American Library Association and other library and education groups—have backed the legislation of net-neutrality principles so that network operators would be unable to restrict to slower connections those subscribers unable to pay premium rates to provide or receive distance-education offerings and other large transmissions. In opposing the Snowe-Dorgan bill, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who chairs the Commerce Committee, characterized it as “imposing a heavy-handed regulation before there’s a demonstrated need,” according to a June 29 report on the online Cnet news service. The telecommunications-reform legislation—S. 2686, the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006—sent to the Senate floor contains an Internet Consumer Bill of Rights provision introduced by Stevens that protects online users’ content-neutral access to any constitutionally protected speech “subject to the limitations of the internet service such subscriber has purchased.” That same day, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oreg.) issued a statement announcing his intent to object to any further action on S. 2686 until it contains “a clear policy preserving the neutrality of the internet” by preventing network providers from saddling consumers and small businesses alike “with new and discriminatory fees over and above what they already pay for internet access.” The advancement of the Senate bill comes some two weeks after the House passed the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement (COPE) Act. Both bills would place regulatory enforcement of consumers’ internet access with the Federal Communications Commission. Posted June 30, 2006. |
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