The push for Net neutrality suffered a setback yesterday, but it’s not dead yet. Rather, as described by InformationWeek in Net Neutrality Debate Shifts to Full Senate, a tie vote in the Senate Commerce Committee rejected a Net neutrality amendment. While a setback for advocates of Net neutrality (in essence, a condition where all Internet content is delivered at the same price), it is expected that the battle will now be waged in the full Senate. Some think that the tie vote in the committee indicates that the full Senate may be nearly evenly split as well.
“There will be an epic battle in the Senate over Net neutrality,” said Adam Green, a spokesman for MoveOn.org Civic Action, which is part of a coalition fighting for the amendment.Some neutral observers see the potential for a political brawl. David Kaut, a telecom analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, told the Washington Post that the tie vote suggests a hardening of opposition by Senate Democrats unless a bill includes Net neutrality safeguards.
One of the problems with an issue like Net neutrality is that there isn’t much resonance in the general voting population. It’s not exactly a major hot button issue, and indeed, it’s complex and requires explanation. Mitch Ratcliffe of ZDNet makes that exact point in Net Neutrality: The Mainstream’s still unconscious. He describes a nice analogy to FedEx not charging more to carry gold than lead, even though the value of the former may be higher.
While I’d like to believe the quotes in the InformationWeek story that suggest the battle of the century is shaping up in the Senate, I just don’t think that’s likely. Public awareness of Net neutrality is zero. On the surface, it appears the losers if there is no Net neutrality are big companies like Google and Microsoft. Even though one can make the case that in the long run consumers will pay more and ISPs will earn more, that in itself requires a complex explanation. The voters understand and get fired up about issues they understand, and issues which they feel affect them directly. Net neutrality loses on both counts. If MoveOn.org wants to do something about it, they should stop spending money on sleazy smear ads slamming individual elected officials and instead run some ads explaining why Net neutrality is important in terms that regular people can understand.
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I think the gold/lead analogy is rather flawed, don’t you? A more appropriate one would be FedEx charging more for a box of bowling balls than an envelope with a few feathers in it, much like the difference between bandwidth usage of, say, checking your email and streaming high definition video.
You are correct, though–this issue is an extremely complicated one and it’s not terribly clear. If you want some more information from the other side of the issue, feel free to check out my coalition’s website, http://handsoff.org and our flash animation at http://dontregulate.org
Comment by HandsOff 07.01.06 @ 1:04 am