Net Neutrality

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failed 2006 net neutrality legislation gets a second chance

This past Thursday, Rep John Conyers introduced HR 5994, which is almost exactly the same as HR 5417, the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006.

The idea of the bill is to ensure a level playing field on the internet and to tie that to existing anti-trust laws, providing a way to enforce net neutrality.

The 2006 bill failed miserably, it only got 5 cosponsors in the House and was placed on the Calendar but never actually came to a vote. We can assume that this is nothing more than election year posturing, but maybe there's a chance Net Neutrality can become part of the larger political debate.

Conyers released a statement on thursday that was basically a reprise of his statement in the 2006 committee hearings on net neutrality "Americans have come to expect the Internet to be open to everyone, the Internet was designed without centralized control, without gatekeepers for content and services. If we allow companies with monopoly or duopoly power to control how the Internet operates, network providers could have the power to choose what content is available."

Some more details can be found at the following urls:

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/05/08/now-there-are-two-net-neutr...
Now There Are Two Net Neutrality House Bills
This article gives some interesting insight into the strategy behind the introduction of this bill. It explains that there is another bill currently in the House, HR 5353, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008.
"one provides promises for ISPs to live up to and the other makes it so the FCC has the power to make them live up to their promises."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080508-new-bill-ties-net-neutrali...
New bill ties net neutrality to antitrust law