John Edwards has issued a strong statement in support of net neutrality today, writing a letter to the FCC stating that the issue “goes to the heart and soul of democracy.” He writes:
If you do not guarantee net neutrality, the Internet could go the way of network television and commercial radio – with just a few loud voices and no room for the grassroots and small entrepreneurs. Our country is already divided enough between the haves and have-nots. Where we go to school, where (and if) we get health care, whether we can retire with dignity – we have big divides in all of these areas in this country. While we work to create one America, we should not allow the Internet to be divided so that some web sites work faster based on who can pay the highest access fees. That would make the other important work we have to do that much harder.
This is a powerful statement from one of the leading presidential candidates and it will be interesting to see which of the others follow. Some clues may be found by perusing where the candidates are raising their big bucks. The non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics shows the following comparisons:
CRP doesn’t yet have a breakdown for current contributions from the cable industry, but a glance at the 2006 cycle shows that Sen. Hillary Clinton was the #1 recipient of funds from that sector, at $161,930.
While we’re on the topic of net neutrality, go read my friend David Isenberg’s trenchant essay on the issue, where he argues that we have to go further and start talking about “structural separation.” That is, companies can either be neutral “pipes” for internet connectivity or content providers, not both. Otherwise, the cable and telcos have an intense business incentive to discriminate among content as they themselves see their core businesses (charging for transmitting bits) undermining by free IP services.