In addition to signing the petition, please call your Senators' offices on Monday morning to ask them to support the "Internet Freedom Preservation Act," S. 2917. The bill bans website discrimination.Email from John EdwardsDear Friend,
When MoveOn and The Christian Coalition agree about something, it's a good bet they're right. Groups as wide-ranging as Gun Owners of America on one side and U.S. PIRG and the One America Committee on the other are fighting to keep the Internet the way it is now - free and open to anyone with access to a computer.
Today, everyone in the world can communicate through the Internet on an equal basis. A small-time programmer like Pierre Omidyar can start an auction site out of his home office and turn it into eBay. A blogger like Josh Marshall can post his opinions on Talking Points Memo and end up attracting more readers than the country's biggest newspapers.
On the Internet, big corporations are on equal footing with everyday people. And it needs to stay that way.
Right now, special interests are pushing bills through Congress that would divide the Internet in two. Corporate deals would determine which web sites would run incredibly fast and which ones would barely run at all. Some users might not be able to access sites operated by regular people.
I don't want Internet service providers to decide which web sites I can look at. And I know you don't either.
Last week, the House of Representatives fell in line with industry demands and passed a telecommunications bill without "net neutrality" protections. That means our only hope of stopping them is in the Senate. Please tell your Senator to keep the Internet the way it is now - free and open to everyone.
Sign the petition now.Some people fear that creating two tiers of the Internet could allow service providers to shut down web sites whose politics they didn't like. But even if they didn't discriminate based on content, the access fees could marginalize smaller and poorer players.
This is the completely wrong direction. We should be making the Internet more accessible, not less. We should be working to connect rural areas, schools in poor neighborhoods and other areas where people have not yet benefited from access to innovation and technology.
The companies that want to charge for the Internet are running a slick public relations campaign to make themselves look like a netroots operation. That's why the folks on our side need to wage a real - and overwhelming - netroots effort to make sure Congress understands that Americans want to keep the Internet the way it is - free and open to everyone.
I'm turning to you to ask for your help. You know how important the Internet is to free speech, especially political speech. And you know what it takes to turn out the netroots. Let's show them how it's done.
Sign the petition now.And then, use the Internet to protect the Internet. Please forward this email to your friends and family.
Thank you for taking action.
Your friend,
John Edwards
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