Keep Your Dirty Hands Off Our Net

From Save the Internet, quoting Rep Ed Markey's opening statement to his neutrality amendment, introduced to the House on Monday:

Good Afternoon. Tomorrow the Committee will take a historic vote. At stake, is the fate of the Internet as we know it.

Tomorrow, I will be offering a “Network Neutrality” amendment, cosponsored by Mr. Boucher, Ms. Eshoo, and Mr. Inslee, to preserve the Internet and its open, non-discriminatory nature. Since the Subcommittee vote, dozens of web blogs have started talking about this issue. A broad coalition has launched web campaigns, such as www.savetheinternet.com, and www.dontmesswiththenet.com. These coalitions are diverse and growing hourly. They include leading Internet companies such as Ebay, Yahoo, Amazon, as well as entrepreneurs, small businesses, consumer groups, Common Cause, Gun Owners of America, the National Religious Broadcasters, moveon.org, the ACLU, and thousands of concerned citizens. I welcome the support of the Internet community in our legislative efforts.

The reason for the heightened interest is that tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of American businesses use and rely upon the Internet every day. In addition to its vital economic role, the Internet is also an unparalleled vehicle for open communications by non-commercial users, for religious speech, for civic involvement, and our First Amendment freedoms.

Yet the Internet is at endangered because of the misguided provisions of the bill before us, which put at grave risk the Internet as an engine of innovation, job creation, and economic growth. The bill permits the imposition of new fees, or “broadband bottleneck taxes” for Internet sites to access high-bandwidth consumers. This will stifle openness, endanger our global competitiveness, and warp the web into a tiered Internet of bandwidth haves and have-nots. It is the introduction of creeping Internet protectionism into the free and open World Wide Web.

Tomorrow’s network neutrality debate will present members with a choice. It is a choice between favoring the broadband designs of a small handful of very large companies or safeguarding the dreams of thousands of inventors, entrepreneurs, and small businesses. Tomorrow we will either vote to preserve the Internet as we know it, or instead, vote to fundamentally and detrimentally alter it.

I don't want to simply buy into the fear-mongering on this issue, but a lot of reliable sources seem very concerned. Let me know if I can relax. Or if you know why most of the politicians on the Capitol seem okay with passing a bill--pushed by telecom giants--to end the neutrality and equality that is the hallmark of the Internet, please fill me in on their rationale, because they've really stumped me on this one.
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Want to know why you should worry? Read this.
Want to support web neutrality? Sign this petition.
Want to read more? Check out this article from TPMcafe or this one from dmJournal.