First Amendment Alert

When I was 11 or 12 years old, there was a best-selling novel titled What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg about sex and greed in Hollywood. This was the 1950s, so there were no explicit sex scenes but it was notorious, in its day, as a racy read.

One rainy, weekend afternoon, I was curled up on the sofa, deeply into the book. A friend of my Dad’s, Les, stopped by, peered at the title and said to my Dad, “You’re not letting her read that, are you?” “Why not?” said my Dad. “If I don’t, she’ll read it in secret.” (No books were off-limits in our house.)

Thence ensued a discussion between Dad and Les about appropriate reading, book banning, free speech, the meaning of the First Amendment, etc. and I, pretending to read but listening closely, soaked up every word. I’ve been a rabid First Amendment absolutist ever since.

Cut to 2005. When I was a panel speaker at the first Blogher conference last summer, Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University who is also a media blogger at PressThink, said something so succinct, so smart and so true that I, caught up in its stunning simplicity, missed whatever came next.

I liked it so much that as soon as I returned to New York, I gave it a permanent home on TGB down there at the bottom of the left rail with a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is what Jay said:

“Blogs are little First Amendment machines.”

Think about that. You and I, each one of us sitting at our computers at home, maybe in our pajamas, have as much access to publish our words, thoughts and ideas as the richest person or corporation in the world. And, remarkably, our blogs are as easily and openly accessible to anyone, anywhere as the biggest websites online.

Type in nytimes.com or timegoesby.net – each will arrive in your browser at the same speed. Type in the address of a sex website and, assuming parental controls have not been invoked, it too drops onto your screen. And so does any other website of any kind.

Equal access to the internet makes that possible. No one, any longer, need own a printing press or a television network, or be anointed a big-time reporter or pundit to be heard. This has never happened before in the history of the world, and without a doubt, the Founding Fathers would approve.

Amid the plethora of new technologies thrown at us over the past two or three decades, we tend forget how revolutionary some are. Open, equal access to the internet is one of those few.

But danger looms. There is, currently, a crucial First Amendment issue on the table. How it is resolved in Washington will affect every one of us - personally and politically. It is an issue we must win - otherwise, we can kiss the First Amendment goodbye. It’s complicated, but here is the essence of it:

AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, BellSouth and others - the giant communications companies who donate big bucks to congressional election campaigns - are lobbying Congress for control of the internet. They want to decide which websites go fast, which go slow and which are not available at all by charging content providers to guarantee delivery.

“They want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video — while slowing down or blocking their competitors.

“These companies have a new vision for the Internet. Instead of an even playing field, they want to reserve express lanes for their own content and services — or those from big corporations that can afford the steep tolls — and leave the rest of us on a winding dirt road.”

- savetheinternet.com

There has been, since nearly the beginning of the internet, the concept of “net neutrality.” It’s a technical concept, but don’t be put off by that. It just means anyone who publishes a website has equal access to connection no matter who they are. Every nation operating a portion of the internet has adopted some form of the net neutrality principle.

Now, mega-corporations want to gut that principle, and don’t think the reasons behind their move don’t have a political motivation in addition to billions of dollars in revenue.

Last week, Edward J. Markey, a Democratic representative from Massachusetts, introduced legislation, the Network Neutrality Act of 2006. It seeks to define net neutrality to keep the internet, says Markey, from becoming a discriminatory toll road.

Sounds good, except that the internet has always operated, and continues to operate, freely without legislation and those who oppose the bill argue that the

“…phenomenal growth over the past decade stems from the ability of entrepreneurs to expand consumer choices and opportunities without worrying about government regulation.”

- handsofftheinternet.com

To muddy the issue almost beyond comprehension, these two organizations (savetheinternet and handsofftheinternet, among others) appear to have the same goal – to defeat the big telcos’ move to control internet access - although by different means: legislation and no legislation. But they’re so busy accusing one another of secretly being on the side of corporate America that they’ve forgotten to clearly explain their points of view.

Generally, I tend to a government hands-off position, but I haven’t had time to sort out this issue for myself yet. Nevertheless, it is crucial for the internet to remain access neutral, so jump in here with any thoughts you have.

If we lose net neutrality, we will lose our “little First Amendment machines” which are just about all we have these days to fight the erosion of all our other Constitutional rights and liberties that are being chipped away at by venal politicians and their corporate controllers.