First Amendment free speech rights are not about the press, but about citizens and their right to criticize government. That is why citizens should be alarmed–very alarmed–by efforts of big broadband carriers like Verizon and AT&T to enact a legislative lock on the right to decide what content their Internet pipelines carry.

The issue in Washington is net neutrality. The danger is illustrated graphically by the NY Times in a Sept. 27 page 1 story detailing how Verizon rejected a political text message campaign by Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group.

There is no better argument in favor of net neutrality than Verizon’s own justification for killing Naral’s text messages. Said the Times:

In turning down the program, Verizon, one of the nation’s two largest wireless carriers, told Naral that it does not accept programs from any group “that seeks to promote an agenda or distribute content that, in its discretion, may be seen as controversial or unsavory to any of our users.� Naral provided copies of its communications with Verizon to The New York Times.

Read that again: Verizon does not accept programs from any group ”that seeks to promote an agenda or distribute content…that may be seen as controversial or unsavory to any of our users.” That’s exactly the kind of political speech protected by the First Amendment.

Is this one of the big companies we want controlling content of the Internet?

Net neutrality is a complex issue. It is truly understood by only a few in Washington, which works well for the big Internet carriers. A diverse coalition spread across the ideological spectrum is fighting back, however. JOMC colleague and Prof. Paul Jones has blogged extensively on the subject. Posted by Leroy Towns

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 9:42 am and is filed under Government, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.