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What’s New
Despite our efforts, the U.S. House recently approved legislation that would allow the telephone and cable companies to limit our Internet access by deciding who and what gets priority. If they succeed in enacting their preferred legislation, you might not be able to surf the websites you like because they’d been relegated to a new, slow lane.
In November, the U.S. Senate may act on a similar bill that’s already been approved in the Senate Commerce Committee. Neither bill keeps the Internet free of telephone and cable company tollbooths.
Read an opinion column on Internet Freedon from Florida PIRG's Brad Ashwell.
How You Can Help
Sign our Internet Freedom petition which we will deliver to your senators. Then, ask your friends and family to help too by forwarding this e-mail to them.
Summary
Many of us use the internet every day to do things like read our local paper online, download music, share photos with friends and family and keep in touch through email.
Now, the largest telephone and cable companies are trying to limit our Internet access by deciding who and what gets priority.
The Internet was designed so that no one company, government, or individual could control or limit the flow of information, and that's why it's just as easy to access a popular website like Amazon.com as it is to send an email to a loved one.
But the internet as we know it is at risk because of recent Federal Communications Commission and Supreme Court decisions. Unless reversed, these decisions will allow the telephone and cable companies to decide who and what gets priority online.
This will not only affect the way in which we use the internet on a day-to-day basis but will also stifle innovation online. Instead of being a place for big ideas from small companies, the Internet would become a rigged system where only those with the deepest pockets get a chance to compete.
This will also affect political and cultural ideas.
Your Senators have an opportunity to preserve to preserve our freedom of choice online. Comprehensive Internet and cable television reform legislation recently proposed in the Senate Commerce Committee by its Chairman, Ted Stevens (AK) fails to preserve what is called “net neutrality,” among other problems. But a bi-partisan PIRG-backed bill by Senators Olympia Snowe (ME) and Byron Dorgan (ND) could be added to the Stevens bill. Sign our Internet Freedom petition.
Resources
August 2006 Letter from U.S. PIRG, Consumers Union and other groups to full Senate opposing telecom bill.
Download our Reform Our Media brochure.
Letter from PIRG and other groups to the House Energy and Commerce Committee (April 2006)
