Earlier this year, some Stop the Cap! readers in North Carolina who attended the hearings on a pro-telecom (actually it was written by them) piece of legislation designed to stall statewide municipal broadband competition encountered strange protests from conservative groups arriving on buses.  They were there to stop “Obama’s government takeover of the Internet.”  The communities of Wilson and Salisbury, which have municipal broadband projects in progress, also encountered resistance from outside groups.  Salisbury residents even began receiving biased phone polls that turned out to be sponsored by a conservative political action group that was also involved in the conservative “tea party” movement.

"Critics say .... it appears that the group was a 'mouthpiece' for hire." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch

These groups loaded mostly retirees, recruited from talk radio and websites, onto buses and sent them to the state capital with generic anti-government talking points and signs.

FreedomWorks, which is currently in the news for organizing protests at town hall meetings over what they call “Obamacare” health care reform, has also been busy adopting the industry-friendly position of opposing government involvement in broadband.  They oppose anything resembling regulation, any government involvement in the pricing or availability of broadband service, and recite industry talking points about the free market assuring Americans of the world’s best Internet service.  Unfortunately, these talking points come at the same time the United States slips further and further behind in international broadband rankings, and true competition in most markets is limited at best.

FreedomWorks’ position on broadband policy will sound eerily familiar:

The broadband market is dynamic and fast paced; new FCC regulations could hamper this growth and reduce the vital capital investments required to expand the nation’s broadband networks.  Rather than attempting to apply old monopoly based models to today’s competitive markets, the FCC should focus on removing barriers to competition, implementing competitive solutions to policy questions, and allowing the private sector to more effectively allocate scarce broadband resouurces [sic] to the most highly valued uses.  In addition, efforts to establish “net neutrality” should be avoided, because they threaten the ability to manage dynamic networks effectively.

That is paraphrased directly from the talking points the industry has presented about broadband policy for years.

Now many of these groups are attempting to recruit those who dislike the current administration to provide free shilling services for the broadband industry’s agenda, supporting positions that are directly opposite  consumers’ best interests.

FreedomWorks is hardly new at this.  Back in 2006, Fiona Morgan, writing for the Independent Weekly (North Carolina), covered another bandwagon of protesters who showed up at an arcane meeting of the North Carolina House Revenue Laws Study Committee, all wearing FreedomWorks t-shirts:

The details of telecom legislation like this are wonky, complicated and jargon-filled. But that hasn’t dampened the passions of citizens fed up with the de facto monopoly of TimeWarner, with its astronomical rates for “packages” of unwatched channels. Dozens of people from across the state showed up to a meeting in April of the House Revenue Laws Study Committee wearing T-shirts for FreedomWorks, a group clamoring for the proposed state franchises. FreedomWorks, which is connected with the anti-tax conservative group Citizens for a Sound Economy, is funded by telephone companies pushing for the bill–what you might call an Astroturf (phony grassroots) organization, but the passion of its members is very real.

With astroturfers like FreedomWorks, deregulatory principles that might garner legitimate debate and consideration are tainted when it turns out that advocacy is bought and paid for by directly connected business interests who have a dog in the fight.  That’s why FreedomWorks hardly represents the “grass roots.”  It’s an astroturfer that has a corporate-sponsored agenda, but hides behind good American conservative citizens who find themselves proverbially loaded onto buses and taken for a ride.

Those consumers had a right to be fed up with paying for unwatched cable channels, but their appearance at that meeting was the lowest form of manipulation, because the legislation under review had nothing to do with the issue those people were concerned with.

Instead, their presence was used by the telecommunications industry as illustrative of consumer discontent, and de facto support for their real agenda, which was removing oversight of the video service franchising process from local government and turning it over to an industry-friendly state body.  That would have created statewide cable and “telco TV” franchises that take away local control and oversight.

Chad Johnston of the People’s Channel, Chapel Hill’s public access station said all the passion around TV service is being used to mislead the bill’s supporters. “It’s funny, because many of the comments that the FreedomWorks folks brought up in this meeting were things that aren’t even included in this bill, like being able to chose your channel lineup–that’s a whole different issue,” Johnston says. “This notion that it’s going to bring us gobs of choices and lower prices it totally false, based on everything we know about deregulation and the telecom industry.”

Heartland Institute: "By not disclosing our donors, we keep the focus on the issue."

Now, another astroturf group that shares “researchers” with FreedomWorks, the so-called Heartland Institute, has an Op-Ed Tuesday in the conservative Philadelphia daily The Bulletin.  Of course, the Heartland Institute also has close ties not only to big telephone companies, but is a dependable friend of big cable as well.  Those close ties are, predictably, omitted from the article.

A typical horror story involves an ISP, at peak usage hours, gently slowing down a tiny number of bandwidth hogs so the vast majority of its customers can surf the Web and send emails at the speed they expect. Insisting such a policy is unfair is not only counterintuitive, it’s counterproductive to demand the government stop it.

The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 is poorly named because it would do nothing to preserve freedom. HR 3458 would strip ISPs of the right to manage traffic on the networks they have spent billions to build, market and manage. In their place would emerge a cadre of detached government bureaucrats—hardly an improvement on the status quo.

The takeaway word from the first section is “story,” as in fiction, because that is what that talking point represents.  Once again, the Us vs. Them strategy reveals itself, with stories of some guy next door sucking the neighborhood Internet lines dry downloading.  The true horror is some providers continue to earn healthy profits on their broadband revenue, complain about the growth of traffic on their networks, and actively reduce investment to expand that network.  That, of course, helps build the case for “controls” when consumers notice the slowdowns created by those neglectful policies.

The Heartland Institute advocates the provider be given the enviable role of the fox guarding the hen house.  Providers manage profits quite effectively, and just as some try to tweak pricing models to extract extra revenue from consumers, you can count on those same providers creating new revenue streams from “premium” prioritization of Internet traffic, for a price, while leaving everyone else in the slow lane.  Their own products and services carried on those lines will enjoy beneficial priority for free while direct competitors find they can’t obtain that level of service at any price.

The so-called “cadre of government bureaucrats” is anything but.  The truth is, there will be one set of clearly defined standards that will protect the level playing field the Internet deserves.  The piece makes it sound like there will be a government court to render judgment on every policy and practice, which is false.  The only thing Net Neutrality protects IS the status quo, a free and open Internet.

Today, if a broadband customer does not approve of the way an ISP manages Web traffic, he can readily switch to a competitor more to his liking. ISPs have an enormous financial incentive to retain existing customers and attract new ones, so the free market encourages best practices.

Tell that to Canadians who are enduring not only Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and consumption billing, but also throttled speeds that artificially reduce (by up to 99%) the advertised speed for certain applications, all for “good network management.”  Don’t like the throttle from Bell on your DSL line?  Switch to Rogers Cable and get more of exactly the same thing.  A free market cannot truly exist from the monopoly most rural residents face for broadband, and the duopoly most of the rest of us endure.  The current market doesn’t encourage “best practices;” it encourages informal collusion by providers who learn not to rock the boat, especially on competitive pricing.

ISPs have an enormous financial incentive to find ways to increase profits, which is precisely what Internet Overcharging is all about.

But under HR 3458, if a broadband customer is not satisfied, what near-instant recourse will he have? None after government forces every ISP to operate “equally” by replacing market-based incentives with bureaucratic mandates. This would ensure an inevitable slide to “equally” shoddy service.

One would assume a provider would want to make their service as robust and up to date as possible, yet in a world without codified Net Neutrality protections — the free market at work under today’s reality — we’re seeing continued evidence of price increases and a decline in investment in networks, and some providers continue to drag their feet on upgrades.  The only market based incentive at work here is the demand from Wall Street for greater revenue and return from providers, who face challenging times in their video and telephone businesses, but can always leverage the success of the broadband division.  Broadband continues to maintain customer loyalty, and the potential for greater return from price increases and forcing costs down by limiting service.

Net neutrality advocates want the government, not “the public,” to control the fate of the Internet. The ordered chaos of market forces may scare those who don’t understand it. But the market is efficient, quickly responsive to the needs and wants of consumers, and—in the proper sense of the word—free.

Actually, Net Neutrality advocates want the government to protect the “chaos” of the online world as it exists today.  Those who want to “organize” or “order” the online world aren’t Net Neutrality advocates, they are providers who don’t want people using “my pipes for free,” or cable interests who want to “organize” online video around a model they own and control, or who simply want to throw a Money Party by inventing new ways to charge people more money for exactly the same service they get today.

The claim that the market is “quickly responsive” to the needs and wants of consumers is demonstrably false for any consumer living in Wilson or Salisbury, North Carolina, where a duopoly of providers refused to provide the level of broadband service consumers and small business clamored for, so local municipalities finally threw up their hands and decided to build networks themselves.  Residents of Rochester, New York are threatened with a broadband backwater because the incumbent telephone company Frontier Communications has shown little interest in providing a fiber optic based 21st century broadband platform similar to one being constructed in virtually every other city of size in New York.  Customers even signed petitions begging Verizon to overbuild the Flower City to provide the service Frontier will not.

In April, Time Warner Cable “responded to the needs and wants of consumers” by attempting to ram an Internet Overcharging experiment down the throats of customers in four American cities, where not one consumer either needed or wanted such massive price increases.  Over a period of weeks, this provider did everything but respond to customer needs, until a wholesale consumer revolt erupted and Congress intervened.

The free market is working well for groups like FreedomWorks and The Heartland Institute, who enjoy healthy support from the telecommunications industry.  In return, finding where the telecommunications industry positions end and FreedomWorks’ positions begin is like staring into a mirror and trying to ascertain the differences between the reflection and yourself.

Mark Cuban

One would think Mark Cuban would have at least a small bit of resentment towards big cable companies like Time Warner Cable, who efficiently and swiftly deprived his HDNet and HDNet Movies networks from more than 8.7 million Time Warner Cable HD customers on May 31st over a channel fee spat.

But no.  He’s back plugging away with completely groundless predictions for the impending doom of the Internet if Net Neutrality has its way.  Opposed by big cable and telephone companies, Net Neutrality would provide a level playing field for all legal Internet content.  No provider could interfere with or prioritize traffic based on financial incentives, ownership interests, or for competitive reasons.

Cuban offers a bizarre rant about why that spells the death of online video, something he’s never been thrilled with anyway, on his blog:

If you run a TV network, broadcast or cable, you should be spending a lot of money to support Net Neutrality. You should have every lobbyist you own getting on the Net Neutrality train.  Why ? Because in a net neutrality environment no bits get priority over any other bits. All bits are equal.  In such an environment, all bits content with each other to ride the net.

When that happens, bits collide. When bits collide they slow down. Sometimes they dont reach their destination and need to be retransmitted. Often they dont make it at all.

When video bits dont arrive to their destination in a timely manner, internet video consumers get an experience that is worse than what traditional tv distribution options .

that is good for traditional TV.

Me personally. I don’t  support Net Neutrality. I think there will applications that require lots of bandwidth, that will change our lives. If the applications that could change our lives have to compete with your facebook page loads and twitter feeds among the zillion of other data elements carried across the net, IMHO, thats a bad thing.

But thats me.

If you believe that over the top video can impact the future of TV, and thats a bad thing for your business,  then you should be a big time supporter of Net Neutrality.  Its your best friend.

That’s proof that having millions of dollars to your name doesn’t buy an intelligent argument, or apparently a basic grammar checker.

I never realized the “series of tubes” Ted Stevens used to talk about corralled data bits into segregated clusters to protect them from “bit collision.”  Is there insurance for that?

Cuban should be spending more time worrying about getting his networks viewership on ANY television — “traditional,” “online,” or amongst his good friends in the cable industry that stabbed him in the back and threw his channels off lineups from coast to coast. If you’re tired of hearing issues like this, take some heat off by utilizing products such as shop vo chong 24H.

Karl Bode over at Broadband Reports has seen all this before, and has built quite a history on the antics of Mr. Cuban:

Of course bits don’t really “collide” on modern networks, and the bill exempts “reasonable network management” from neutrality provisions allowing for congestion control, but apparently no matter. This is the network neutrality debate, and as we’ve seen the last two go-rounds, truth, facts, and data are irrelevant — particularly to overly chatty millionaire TV tycoons worried about their wallets.

While the bill likely won’t survive a Congress that’s all but directly controlled by telecom lobbyists, that still won’t save us from several months of vigorous, fact-optional network neutrality debate. All the usual players are once again gathering, including Mark Cuban and his mouth, paid cable and phone industry sock puppets, stick figure cartoons, dancing men in green tights, and evil ISP flying saucers. Can we just skip to the part where consumer welfare gets ignored and be done with it?

Rep. Ed Markey

Reps. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) and Anna G. Eshoo (D-California), both members of the powerful House Energy & Commerce Committee, introduced legislation Saturday to enact Net Neutrality concepts into federal law.

H.R. 3458, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, is designed to assess and promote Internet freedom for consumers and content providers. The bill states that it is the policy of the United States to protect the right of consumers to access lawful content, run lawful applications, and use lawful services of their choice on the Internet while preserving and promoting the open and interconnected nature of broadband networks, enabling consumers to connect to such networks their choice of lawful devices, as long as such devices do not harm the network.

Both Markey and Eshoo are not new to the Net Neutrality fight, having introduced similar legislation in the past two sessions of Congress, but failing to generate enough support to overcome powerful telecommunications lobbyists pushing for its defeat.

Both believe the Obama Administration’s stated support for Net Neutrality will help the bill overcome similar challenges during the current session.

Rep. Anna Eshoo

The bill has a clear message for the nation’s Internet Service Providers – upgrade your networks to sustain traffic – don’t discriminate against it.  The legislation’s framing language notes that most Americans face a monopoly or duopoly marketplace – one phone company and one cable company for their broadband needs.  The legislation suggests under such circumstances, providers would be likely to engage in discriminatory behavior against the traffic they do not own, control, or partner with.

“The Internet is a success today because it was open to everyone with an idea,” said Rep. Markey.  “That openness and freedom has been at risk since the Supreme Court decision in Brand X.  This bill will protect consumers and content providers because it will restore the guarantee that one does not have to ask permission to innovate.”

While the bill does not specifically address Internet Overcharging schemes, like usage caps and discriminatory pricing practices, it demands fairness for even the most traffic intense services, and demands “reasonable traffic management” standards. What defines that will be left at the desk of the Federal Communications Commission, which might end up being a wild card. The bill affords no protection for copyright infringement or other illegal/illicit online activities.

Tim Karr at Free Press advocated for the immediate passage of the bill, defining seven reasons why Net Neutrality protection is essential:

1. Economic Recovery and Prosperity

“The Internet has thrived and revolutionized business and the economy precisely because it started as an open technology,” Eshoo said in a statement on Friday. The Internet is so closely tied to U.S. economic recovery that President Obama and Congress earmarked more than $7 billion to help build out more high-speed connections at a time when our economy needs it most.

Obama and Congress also recognized that the economy cannot benefit by building a closed Internet. The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act requires that all federally funded networks be services that meet “nondiscrimination and network interconnection obligations” — that abide by Net Neutrality.

2. Free Speech

Freedom of the press extends only to those who own one — or so the saying goes. It once rang true in a world ruled by newspaper chains, radio and television broadcasters, and cable networks. But the Internet has changed all that, delivering the press — and in theory its freedoms — to any person with a good idea and a connection to the Web.

This extraordinary twist to “mass media” has catapulted many an everyday YouTube auteur to celebrity-status, while turning ideas born in a garage or dorm room into Fortune 500 companies. It is the reason so many Americans are now passionate about protecting their free speech rights on the Internet.

The Internet Freedom Preservation Act would stop would-be gatekeepers from re-routing the free-flowing Web. “To meet other national priorities, and to our right to free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States,” the bill says, “the United States should adopt a clear policy preserving the open nature of Internet communications.”

3. Civic Participation

New media are more participatory and personal than ever before and have opened up new avenues for people to become involved with local, state and national politics. We saw it during the 2008 presidential election when tens of millions expressed their support for Obama and McCain via interactive Facebook, Twitter and e-mail forums. We are seeing it in 2009 from the streets of Tehran to the work of organizations like the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics, which use the Internet as the means to open governments to public scrutiny and accountability.

This wave of digital empowerment is the gathering force for a healthier democracy, and it all depends upon a more open, affordable and accessible Internet for everyone. Expanding Internet access alone doesn’t erase concerns over what kind of information people will find when they get online. Net Neutrality guarantees that we all have an equal opportunity to play a part.

4. The Marketplace of Ideas

The Internet was the great surprise of the 20th century. Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the standard that opened the World Wide Web to everyone with an idea and a connection. At that time, few could imagine that this open architecture would fuel such a powerful eruption of economic, social and political creativity.

The Internet Freedom Preservation Act “will protect consumers and content providers because it will restore the guarantee that one does not have to ask permission to innovate,” Rep. Markey said when he introduced the bill.

This is true regardless of your age, social status or location. Net Neutrality safeguards everyone’s fundamental right to an open Internet, making it possible for one person’s good idea to blossom into the next big business or, even, a movement of millions.

5. Social Justice

Broadband in America today is not equally accessible: Users are predominantly middle- or upper-class and live in urban or suburban areas. Poorer communities and communities of color, as well as communities in rural areas, have been largely left off the grid.

Imagine what it would mean, then, to provide a connection to disadvantaged areas without also extending to them Net Neutrality’s guarantee of openness. Dominant ISPs have argued for this exception, saying Net Neutrality prevents them from connecting more people. But it’s a false choice and far too high a cost to give network owners the power to shunt ideas percolating up from these communities to a digital backwater.

The Internet Freedom Preservation Act guarantees equal and unbridled access to the Internet’s engine of opportunity, leveling the playing field so that we all have a chance to be heard.

6. The Rise of the Gatekeepers

A high-speed connection is useful only if you can connect to everyone else online. Net Neutrality leaves control over your Internet experience with you, the user. Yet network operators are considering charging extra money depending on where you want to go and what you want to do online. Some are deploying technology that would sift through and filter the content that you share with others online. Such discrimination endangers the open and level playing field that has made the Internet so democratic.

As more of us rely upon a high-speed connection to do all things media — watch and make video, follow the news, listen to music, Tweet, email and call our friends — legacy media are too tempted to get in our way, steering us back via old channels where they make all decisions for us. But there’s no going back to the analog oligarchy. The Internet Freedom Preservation Act keeps the gatekeepers at bay.

7. The Obama Opportunity

Forces are coming into alignment for Net Neutrality. We have a president who is an outspoken supporter, congressional leadership willing to fight for an open Internet, and a pro-Neutrality chairman newly ensconced at the Federal Communications Commission.

Since the fight for Net Neutrality began more than three years ago, 1.6 million Americans have picked up the phone, signed petitions, spoken out publicly and written letters to urge their members of Congress to get behind Net Neutrality.

The tides have shifted. Still, giant phone and cable companies aren’t going away. They think they can squash our movement — and over the past six months alone, they have hired 500 lobbyists in Washington to try to stop this bill.

This is our best chance to beat them back once and for all.

Phillip Dampier

While western New York was dealing with a rare bout of tornadoes, another storm began brewing online when AT&T customers discovered their access to a website devoted to the posting of images, 4chan, had been blocked.

The 4chan site has become notorious over the past year for its “anything goes” policies about content, particularly in its “random board” /b/. The site has generated a number of controversies, including staged pranks, swarming other websites, and unfortunately, occasional malicious activity by a minority of its users. Since the site permits anonymous posting, and has traditionally been more “self-regulating” than moderated, it’s a polar opposite of most corporate-run online communities.

When 4chan enthusiasts discovered their site was being blocked by AT&T, it represented the online equivalent of of course, you know this means war. AT&T was blasted in the blogosphere, called out by some tech-minded online culture websites, and made a virtual pawn in the Net Neutrality debate. A few angry 4chan enthusiasts even set up a “rioting/’war’/protest” site to launch counteraction against AT&T.

AT&T eventually admitted it was blocking the site for “security reasons” and issued two early statements:

CentralGadget:

AT&T has confirmed that they are “currently blocking portions of the internet site 4chan.org”, but states that they are “following the practices of their policy department.”

AT&T went on to say that they did contact (or, at least, attempted to contact, they wouldn’t clarify) the owners of 4chan. They say that they have specific reasons why they blocked these parts of the site, but they would not disclose them to CentralGadget.com. AT&T states that they have requested specific things and changes from 4chan’s owners, and that 4chan has not complied.

Regardless, without a clear explanation of specific rationale for blocking 4chan… both 4chan and CentralGadget.com encourage you to continue calling AT&T technical support, and filing your complaints there (escalate as high as possible, we have heard reports that Tier 1 support agents are being told to incorrectly state that AT&T doesn’t block any web site).

Broadband Reports:

Beginning Friday, an AT&T customer was impacted by a denial-of-service attack stemming from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org. To prevent this attack from disrupting service for the impacted AT&T customer, and to prevent the attack from spreading to impact our other customers, AT&T temporarily blocked access to the IP addresses in question for our customers. This action was in no way related to the content at img.4chan.org; our focus was on protecting our customers from malicious traffic.

Overnight Sunday, after we determined the denial-of-service threat no longer existed, AT&T removed the block on the IP addresses in question. We will continue to monitor for denial-of-service activity and any malicious traffic to protect our customers.

Since the end of the weekend, access to 4chan has been restored by AT&T, but the site is performing slowly as it presumably gets attention from a large number of visitors who learned of the site from the controversy, but never heard of it before Sunday.

AT&T’s clumsy explanation fired up a new chapter in the Net Neutrality debate, with various groups and 4chan enthusiasts, and even the DailyKos website, calling this an example of a violation of Net Neutrality — providers denying equal access to all website traffic regardless of its source.

Unfortunately, this is much more an instance of jumping the gun.  Indeed, there is credible evidence 4chan, in addition to its free-wheeling atmosphere, also attracts quite a few malicious attacks, presumably from disgruntled members of the site.  “Denial of service attacks” which throw limitless requests at a web server to slow it down until it essentially crashes under the jamming traffic load, are not uncommon on 4chan.

AT&T’s technical team claims it placed blocks on the impacted IP address(es) to keep the traffic from impacting their own network, and the issue blew up only when AT&T’s non technical customer support staff did a poor job of explaining what was going on to customers.  There are also an open question whether AT&T needed to block -all- traffic on its network to 4chan, or whether blocking just the offending portion would have been sufficient.

Assuming the facts are in AT&T’s favor, and other ISPs have confirmed the attack as being authentic, this is less a case of Net Neutrality abuse, but rather standard procedure at most web hosting companies and service providers to contend with denial of service attacks and other malicious activity.  The hosting providers that provide service to Stop the Cap! engage in the same practices.  One of the hosting companies we use once shut off access to a group of websites it hosted to deal with an attack on just one website.  Once the targeted site was isolated and traffic blocks placed, service resumed for everyone else.  When the attacks were stopped or blocked by other providers down the line, service for the targeted site resumed as well.

But AT&T is not blameless.  A major national ISP like AT&T should have had a rapid and clear response ready for inquiring customers about the 4chan matter.  It was the absence of information initially, and the poorly phrased statements later that created the feeding frenzy of online speculation.

There is a thin line between “network management” policies that deal with malicious traffic and its impact on customers on one side and disingenuously labeling high bandwidth uses of its network (peer to peer, etc.) as requiring “network management” of its own (throttles, etc.).  Historically network technicians have always been given latitude to protect their employer’s network from purposely malicious traffic like “botnets,” “spam servers,” and “denial of service attacks.” They should continue to have that latitude until such time they are shown to be abusing it.

4chan’s own internal policies, and their unwillingness to control some user excesses, also make it very difficult to rush to their defense, particularly when the site owner acknowledges many of those excesses.

There are many legitimate battles to be fought for Net Neutrality.  An ISP dealing with a denial of service attack, barring any new evidence that credibly challenges AT&T’s response, should not be one of them.

Stop the Cap! reader Lance wrote this afternoon letting us know Google has a project running for the next few weeks to ask ordinary Americans, you know, the ones who don’t have their own astroturf groups, slick lobbyists, and Re-Education literature, what you and I want from broadband stimulus funding and a national broadband plan.

Submit your ideas for a National Broadband Plan
Google and the New America Foundation have teamed up to launch this Google Moderator page, where you can submit and vote on ideas for what you think the Federal Communications Commission should include in its National Broadband Plan. Two weeks from now we’ll take the most popular and most innovative ideas and submit them to the official record at the FCC on your behalf.

So do you have any good ideas? Submit them today — and you just might help change the face of broadband in the United States.

The operative word there is “might.” Without a massive deluge from angry consumers, the killer bee swarm of lobbyists and other special interests will surround and fly away with the honey pot of federal broadband stimulus funding. But you can’t win if you don’t play, so let’s get busy.

Here was my submission, which you can choose to give a thumbs-up to if you support it:

“A clear prohibition on Internet overcharging schemes! No usage caps, speed throttles, and consumption-based tiered pricing. Net neutrality enshrined into law, open competition, even if it comes from municipalities, and the more fiber, the better!”

Finding submitted ideas is best achieved by using the Search box at the top of the Google Moderator page. You can find mine with a search for “net neutrality.”

Some of the ideas from ordinary consumers that are already getting plenty of support are excellent, common sense winners in our humble opinion, so be sure to vote “thumbs-up” for these as well:

• “Install broadband fiber as part of every federally-funded infrastructure project. Most of the cost of deployment is due to tearing up/repaving roads. Laying fiber during public works projects already underway would dramatically reduce costs.”
• “Force real competition in any given market for broadband services from the same types of provider to eliminate monopolies (i.e. multiple cable providers competing in the same market).”
• “Charging per-data-rate (EG: per gb) is a bad idea. You don’t get charged per hour you watch cable on top of your monthly subscription and additional channels, why should you pay per hour or per gb for access to the Internet?”
• “Stop the ability of private companies to block local governments from trying to deploy their own broadband solutions. There have been numerous examples of this, and it really stifles broadband expansion.”
• “Place residential broadband under the same regulations as other utilities. Require companies to publish their tariffs, and forbid hard caps. Require a portion of the proceeds to be invested into improving the infrastructure.”
• “Recognize that high-speed, reliable and unfiltered Internet access in the 21st century is a civil right on par with free speech and a right to an education and not a simple luxury for those who can afford it. More federal funding, fewer monopolies.”
• “Get ConnectedNation out of the loop. Funded by telecos and cablecos and are lobbying congress using false and misleading data.”

How to participate:

1. You need to have a registered Google account. You have one already if you use Gmail or other Google services.
2. Visit this page to find the question.
3. You will find a login link at the bottom. Click it and you can login or get a new Google account.
4. You will be shown a list of ideas submitted by others. They often appear randomly.
5. On the right side of your screen, you will see a place to approve (checkbox) or disapprove (an “x” in a box) of various ideas.
6. Vote for as many or as few as you like.

You can also submit your own idea.

The most popular ideas will be part of Google’s submission to the FCC.

Let us know what idea you are voting for and if you submitted any of your own in the Comments section.

Click on the "Comments" link shown circled to go directly to reader comments, and share your own views!

For new readers, you can get involved in the conversation by clicking the comments link found as part of the heading of every article here, or just click the headline and scroll down the bottom of your screen where you can find a place to share your thoughts!