Net neutrality supporters argue that the Federal Communications Commission should be given the power to stop broadband Internet service providers from charging extra fees for content delivery or other preferential treatment, effectively creating a tiered Internet system.
“It’s better and more efficient for us all if we have a separate market where we get our connectivity, and a separate market where we get our content,” Berners-Lee said. “Information is what I use to make all my decisions. Not just what to buy, but how to vote.”
“There is an effort by some companies in the U.S. to change this. There’s an attempt to get to a situation where if I want to watch a TV station across the Internet, that TV station must have paid to transmit to me.”
Net neutrality backers feel that without this amendment on the books it could lead to ISPs blocking traffic or censoring websites.
A new house bill introduced last week by the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee aims to make net neutrality enforceable under existing antitrust laws. John Conyers, D-Mich., who serves as co-chairman, Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. and Virginia Rick Boucher, D-Vir. co-sponsored the measure along with Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc.
Called the “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act,” the bill is designed to “provide an insurance policy for Internet users against being harmed by broadband network operators abusing their market power to discriminate against content and service providers,” Sensenbrenner said in a statement.
The crux of the debate revolves around the central principal that the government should not be able to discriminate against certain websites, content delivery and ISPs. Some network operators argue they should be able to charge extra for bandwidth-hogging downloads and other “special services.”
The new bill would make it illegal for carriers to impose such fees on their customers.
In an attempt to rewrite the Telecommunications Act of 1996 by the Senate Commerce Committee, net neutrality was brought into sharp focus. Opponents of the bill present a vague picture of what net neutrality exactly means, stating it’s “still not clearly defined. It’s kind of like pornography: you know it when you see it.”
Republican Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Sam Brownback of Kansas addressed a letter to their senate colleagues titled, “Don’t Be Duped By Advocates of ‘Network Neutrality.’”
They state: “In this context, network neutrality would be anything but neutral. It effectively would penalize broadband access providers for making major improvements to the Internet and would reward online content providers who demand regulation in order to tip the scales of Internet competition in their favor.”
Admitting that the defining principles of net neutrality are still unclear, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. said, “It’s complicated, no doubt about it, but I think Internet freedom is very, very important.”