Congress Gearing Up on Net Neutrality
By Dawn Holian Iype
Posted on Thu May 18, 2006 at 03:01:19 PM EST
There have been some important developments on the net neutrality/telecom reform front in the past 24 hours. Here are the highlights:
1. The COPE Act won't go through the Judiciary Committee. At the end of last month, the COPE Act was approved by the House Commerce Committee. After that, the Judiciary Committee requested a subsequent referral - basically arguing that the net neutrality portions of the bill address competition and anti-trust issues, which their committee has jurisdiction over. Their request was denied yesterday. The Judiciary referral request was the last obstacle standing in the way of the COPE bill moving to the floor of the House.
2. Rep. Sensenbrenner to offer bipartisan net neutrality bill. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (head of the Judiciary Committee) announced that he will offer a stand-alone net neutrality bill. The bill already has bipartisan co-sponsorship, a good sign.
3.
Sen. Stevens confident. At a Senate Commerce Committee
hearing today, Sen. Stevens - author of the hugely
flawed Senate telecom reform bill - said that he is "going to see that this bill gets to the floor and it passes the Senate. It will do so this year." Later in the hearing it was announced that the date for marking up the bill had been pushed back from June 8 until June 20.
4.
Media ownership rules may be in play. At the same Senate Commerce hearing, Sen. Byron Dorgan said he plans to introduce an amendment to the Stevens telecom bill to
limit media consolidation.
So there are lots of moving parts right now. The most important thing you can do today is to tell Congress to protect Internet freedom by passing strong net neutrality legislation. This is an issue that has across-the-board support. Just yesterday, R.E.M. came out in favor of net neutrality, and so did the Christian Coalition. Momentum is on our side, but there's no room for complacency.
Tags: Media and Democracy, net neutrality, COPE, telecom (all tags)
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