A NEUTRAL NET

Using the Internet to talk, shop, study or pester your friends with well-worn jokes already takes up enough of your time so you may not have learned about “net neutrality.” But if you want to keep the Web unimpeded for these valuable pursuits and for, say, creating a business or an entirely new industry, you will likely want to ensure your access via the Internet remains unfettered.

The net neutrality bill, announced this week by Sens. Olympia Snowe and Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota, requires broadband service providers to allow all content, whether affiliated with the provider or not, to move with the same speed, quality and price. The bill, called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, anticipates and prevents a tiered system of Web access, in which service providers – the telephone and cable companies that have benefited from regulated service – give preferential treatment to content that pays more for access or is politically preferable or for any reason. It also assures consumers of having the option of purchasing a stand-alone connection, one not bundled with cable, phone or voice-over-Internet service.

Whether the problem this bill is trying to solve is imminent is much debated. As Sen. Snowe observes on the op-ed page today, “In the months since broadband was fully deregulated, executives from the largest network operators have publicly announced their intentions to charge or provide preferential treatment to certain Internet companies to get to consumers, a change that would do away with the Internet as we know it.”

Advocates of net neutrality point to comments such as those from AT&T Chief Edward Whitacre, who in Businessweek said of content providers, “Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there’s going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they’re using.”

Customers by the millions already pay for those pipes through broadband access, but the opportunity to make more money, Congress figures, will be irresistible to service providers, which, in fairness, increasingly are in competition with voice-over-Internet companies.

The Web has been a marvel in part because it is so wide open – its pages are cheap to put up, its discussions are endless and its appeal is that nearly any interest can be found or invented on it. Changing the way Web sites are charged or how accessible those sites are reduces the chances of tiny sites getting launched and increases the ability of service providers to pick winners and losers. Congress is right to try to head this off.

The Snowe-Dorgan bill is strong in establishing equal access for sites but appropriately modest in its use of regulatory language. It reasserts providers’ ability to protect their service, but it draws the line at content. The importance of this was highlighted recently at a press conference announcing the bill, when 20 groups, from Moveon.org to the Christian Coalition, stood in support of the legislation.

Operating the Internet in a nondiscriminatory manner is what has made the Web so useful and it is what will keep it useful. The Snowe-Dorgan legislation is a thoughtful way to do that.