Mixed Message in Memphis

MIXED MESSAGE IN MEMPHIS
[SOURCE: Wired in Washington, AUTHOR: Drew Clark]
SavetheInternet.com is David to the Bell companies’ Goliath. Over the last two years AT&T, Verizon and their trade group, the United States Telecom Association, spent more than $50 million lobbying Congress to change the nation’s telecommunications laws. Those payments were made in vain. The Bell-favored bill, which had overwhelmingly passed the House, died last year in the Senate. “Save the Internet,” by contrast, spent $250,000 on educating the public on its side of the story. “Save the Internet” opposed the Bell bill, and made Network Neutrality its rallying cry. It gathered more than 1.5 million signatures in support of this notion: that Bell companies must be stopped from controlling the content that flows over their broadband networks. At the National Conference for Media Reform earlier this month, all the panelists were neutralistas. Not all agreed on what their struggle meant. For Matt Stoller, a political blogger at MyDD.com, the victory was a win for the political left. “The Net Neutrality fight is the first pro-regulatory stance in public debate that has been put forward in 30 years or so that won, and it won in a very specific way,” said Stoller. “We had a debate in the public domain about whether the government should regulate the Internet. We convinced the American people that the government should regulate something.” But Adam Green, communications director for MoveOn Civic Action, preferred this philosophy: “We need to show and prove the world that we are on the side of the free and open market, and the free and open exchange of ideas.” A bit later, Green derided the telecommunications industry critics of neutrality for “trying to brand us as being against companies.” It’s best to keep both sides off-balance, said Tim Wu, the Columbia University law professor who first penned the term “Net Neutrality.” Some dislike his turn of phrase, but he couldn't be happier: “For better or worse, that term Net Neutrality has become a third rail” of telecom politics. Touch it at your peril."
http://www.wiredinwashington.com/20070123.htm