How well are a Comcast employee's nap, censorship, and Net Neutrality related?

Very closely, it turns out.

Earlier this month, ABC's Nightline did a segment on abuse of consumers by large corporations, featuring a video of a Comcast employee who fell asleep on a customer's couch while he was supposed to be making repairs.  The segment also showed anti-Comcast websites and reported that Comcast hires people to monitor such sites, as Timothy Karr reports on SavetheInternet.com.

However, when the Nightline episode appeared on Comcast's video-on-demand service, the "sleepy technician" video and the remarks critical of Comcast had mysteriously disappeared.

Compare the original Nightline version with Comcast's version.

Net Neutrality is confusing, and the complexities of the issue have not been clarified by the debate between supporters and opponents of Net Neutrality - especially when many of those debating are politicians or big corporations.

For example, earlier this month at the Senate Commerce Committee's mark up of the telecom bill, Senator Stevens (R-Alaska) argued that a non-discrimination amendment to the bill was unnecessary because the net effect of the bill was non-discrimination.  Stevens' remarks were in direct contrast to arguments in favor of net neutrality, which claim the bill would unquestionably allow for discrimination on the Internet.  It is difficult to know exactly what Net Neutrality is and why it is necessary when those arguing about it (read: Senator Stevens) purposefully manipulate their language.

Certain politicians are not the only ones deceiving their audiences about Net Neutrality, for Corporate interests have undertaken similar trickery.  Take AT&T's "Hands Off the Internet" campaign, which claims that Net Neutrality will ruin the Internet by clogging it's "pipes," and that any legislation in favor of Net Neutrality is dangerously preemptive.

When politicians mislead and corporate interests lie, the American public should be able to turn to the press for the truth.  Yet far too often, news articles present superficial fluff instead of in-depth research, journalists accept their sources' information as fact without digging deeper, and the media seems more like government propaganda than a government watchdog.

July will prove a significant month for public broadcasting, and efforts to protect the public's airwaves will take on great significance.  The bill approved by the House Appropriations Committee in June with $95 million in cuts to the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will soon be up for debate on the House floor - and so will the future of public television and radio.

In a July 3 National Review article, Kate O'Beirne & Richard Lowry wrote:

But saving the CPB is about far more than saving Big Bird.  (Though it is important to note that the proposed budget cuts will eliminate funding for Ready To Learn, the service that produces shows like Sesame Street and characters like Big Bird.)  The CPB is important not only because of characters like Big Bird, Clifford, and Elmo, but because public broadcasting is a critical source of public affairs and election coverage. Public broadcasting connects people to their communities, by airing local news and artists.  Moreover, when a few media conglomerates control the vast majority of our airwaves, public broadcasting is one of the few remaining outlets for journalists to report the news, unfettered by concerns of angering their corporate owners.

Apparently, in the Senate, the tie goes to the industry lobbyists.

The Senate Commerce Committee ended in an 11-11 tie yesterday over an amendment (sponsored by Senator Snowe, R-ME, and Senator Dorgan, D-ND) that would protect Internet freedom and ensure that network providers cannot discriminate based on content. A tie means that the amendment --which was opposed by cable and telephone industry lobbyists-- was not added to the overall bill.

It was a disappointing outcome, but all hope is not lost. Though Senator Ensign (R-NV) called the Snowe-Dorgan amendment a "poison pill" that would have killed the bill, other Senators say they will not vote for telecommunications reform without a strong net neutrality provision. Accordingly, a debate about net neutrality is virtually guaranteed to occur on the floor of the Senate. Even Senator Stevens (R-AK), the committee's chairman, noted he was worried the bill would not receive the 60 votes necessary for cloture.

If a true democracy is a "marketplace of ideas," where all ideas have equal opportunity to be heard and fail or succeed based on their merit, then a democracy is only as good as its market. Today, the Internet provides a lively and competitive market, a wonderful forum in which the marketplace of ideas can exist.

However, this forum as we know it is at risk of disappearing. Telecommunications companies are lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would allow for a two-tiered internet, one in which the free and open marketplace is replaced by one where ideas supported by big money are given a central location, while lesser funded - or non-funded - ideas are pushed to the fringes.

This morning I attended a discussion at George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy, & the Internet, where one of the speakers, Paul Misener (a VP at Amazon.com) equated telecommunication companies with railroad companies at the end of the 19th century. Railroad companies, Misener said, like telecommunication companies today, had a monopoly in terms of providing service. Still, although little choice existed for which railroad company to use to transport goods, railroad companies themselves could not choose which brands of produce to carry and which to leave behind. Likewise, as Misener explained, we do not want to allow telecommunications companies to control which ideas are carried on the Internet and which are left behind.

With net neutrality provisions defeated last week in the House, it is critical that we call our Senators today to ask them to support net neutrality and save Internet freedom.