A public hearing on the future of the internet is scheduled to take place tomorrow at Harvard Law School where all five FCC commissioners will be in attendance to discuss the issue of Net Neutrality.

While Harvard University may be located in the heart of the People’s Republic of Cambridge, we shouldn’t underestimate the powerful telecommunications lobby which is working hard to change the very core of how the internet operates, in fact, unless we speak out against what telecommunications giants such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon are trying to do, the day may come where your freedom and ability to read, watch, and listen to what you choose – including an article or blog such as this – may very well vanish right before your eyes.

The issue of Net Neutrality is a simple one; it’s about freedom. But the telcos and those on their side have tried to change the argument with a propaganda and disinformation campaign worthy of Joseph Goebbels, or Karl Rove, lining up allies like the Wall Street Journal and by creating opposition groups in the blogosphere to argue that… Net Neutrality legislation really isn’t necessary… that we can trust Ma Bell not to censor the web, even tho we’ve seen example after example that we can’t even trust Ma Bell not to read our email or listen to our phone calls, or censor our webcasts, or allow our torrent streams to operate correctly, or to even be free to criticize their practices.

AT&T has a marketing slogan… “Your world delivered.”

Maybe it should be, “Your world delivered… at a price.”

Or my favorite, “Your world delivered… to Dick Cheney.”

The issues surrounding the electronic frontier aren’t as disjointed as they may seem. Things like Net Neutrality and FISA are inexorably connected because they mean the same thing; someone else controlling and/or monitoring what you do while you’re online.

What’s often schizophrenic about the telecommunications companies is that on some issues, such as copyright infringement and in peer to peer lawsuits, their lawyers and their lobbyists before congress have argued that all the telecos do is provide the ‘dumb pipes’, that they can’t be held responsible in copyright lawsuits – but on the other side of the coin, they argue that they should be able to charge you not only for access to that dump pipe, but that they should also be able to charge you for what you do once you get there.

So, how can they claim to just be operators of the dumb pipe to one concerned party, like the RIAA, but to Google… well, you assholes are getting a free ride and we want a piece of that pie. It doesn’t make a lot of sense does it?

What concerns me as a content provider/blogger/writer is that I depend on the same level of access to the network as Google does. If you enter the url of my website into your browser, it gets to your computer the exact same way, and in the exact same time as any of Google’s services do – and that’s the way it should be. A free and open internet has enabled unlimited creativity and innovation, allowing some of the coolest and most important applications to a functioning democracy to be brought to fruition like blogs, social networks, YouTube, cloud based applications, iTunes, internet radio, VoIP, and the list goes on – all this because of Net Neutrality.

I said that the issue of Net Neutrality was about one thing, freedom. But it’s also about something else, and that’s greed, and on a more insidious level, it’s about trust. Anyone who connects to the internet must do so thru some kind of telecom company, so they’re already getting paid to run the dumb pipes. They’re making a fortune delivering content all over the world, but they don’t see it that way, they think they’re losing money every time you look at a website, and that’s why we have to make sure Net Neutrality is preserved on a Federal level.

From Save the Internet:

Don’t take the Internet for granted

The Internet Freedom Preservation Act (HR 5353) will guarantee Net Neutrality protections for everyone.

We must pass this bill to protect everyone’s right to connect with one another without being blocked by phone and cable companies.

You can get involved by showing your support for HR 5353, a BIPARTISAN BILL, by contacting your member of congress here. This is an important issue that matters to all of us.

In news report after news report we keep hearing about how the telecommunications companies are doing things which impede our ability to fully use the internet and about their continual assault upon civil liberties by cooperating with a paranoid government with warrantless wiretaps — the internet after all was created with public taxpayer funds. Shouldn’t we tell them to back off now before it’s too late?

If you can attend the public hearing at Harvard tomorrow here’s the information, but don’t ignore this issue because it isn’t going away until laws are passed to protect the freedoms we’re taking for granted.

All five FCC commissioners are coming to Boston on Monday, Feb. 25, to hear from the public about recent efforts by Comcast and others to block and censor Internet content.

WHAT: Public Hearing on the Future of the Internet
WHEN: Monday, Feb 25, 2008
TIME: 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
WHERE: Harvard Law School, Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall
1515 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138