Free speech on internet under fire

"The internet is not something you dump something on," Senator Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, noted during recent hearings.

"It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes." The Alaskan Republican's ignorance, ridiculed by bloggers and TV comics, added a surreal touch to a titanic struggle, unfolding in Washington and cyberspace. The 82-year-old senator was defending a telecommunications bill that, if made into law, could have far reaching impacts for internet users.

The big issue is "network neutrality". Traditionally, US telephone and cable operators who act as internet service providers have been "neutral", making no effort to control what customers do online.

This principle is now under threat. The catalyst is the broadband revolution. "We're standing on the cusp of a new broadband reality," says Timothy Karr, campaign director for Free Press, part of an alliance of consumer bodies, trade unions, liberals, conservatives, internet companies and others who are fighting to preserve network neutrality. "As more Americans go online, corporations want to find new ways to profit. The only way they can do that is by undermining net neutrality."

Vast profits will be made as DSL (digital subscriber line) services distribute movies, television, telephone and other information. During the dial-up era, when lines were neutral, commerce went to websites. Now AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon, the major US telephone carriers, backed by Stevens, the bill's author, want to charge websites for rapid content delivery. Pay up, or wait.

They argue that revenue is needed to build faster communications networks to compete with cable companies like Time-Warner and Comcast.

Opponents say this will create "toll lanes" and will destroy the internet's role as a uniquely egalitarian medium. "The two dominant broadband providers - cable monopolies and local telephone giants - control well over 90 per cent of all high-speed service in the US," says the Centre for Digital Democracy, "and they are committed to transforming the public internet into a private, pay-as-you-go toll road."

While Stevens - whose bill is part of a congressional effort to overhaul the 1996 Telecommunications Act - provoked derision, comments by the head of AT&T, who complained that Google, Yahoo and others were getting a free ride, sent a frisson through network neutrality advocates.

Some fear the toll clock began ticking in May, when America On Line - one of the world's major Internet Service Providers, with 24.5 million subscribers in the US and abroad - debuted its "certified email system".

Briefly, the system allows premium customers (certified mail costs senders a quarter of a cent to one cent per message), to bypass spam filters and go straight to your mailbox, an enormous advantage for businesses that use mass mailings. According to AOL, certified mail - run by Goodmail, a software company - will curb online identity theft.

Detractors quickly blasted AOL's move as an "email tax", that would create a "two-tier internet", a hierarchy of haves and have-nots.

"It creates a tiered system that allows AOL to profit from the problem of spamming, while doing nothing to solve it," says Karr.

Despite AOL assurances that its "premium" service will not harm other customers and provides only "intangible" revenue, critics charge that it will "degrade" email by cutting resources spent tackling spam.

Those who don't pay, say opponents, risk having emails blocked as spam or emasculated, with images and web links deleted. They also fear certified mail may harm a vibrant online community that, harnessed by groups like MoveOn, has become a grassroots political force in the US. "The more people become frustrated with spam, the greater the incentive to switch to certified mail," argues Karr. AOL says this is nonsense.

Despite fears certified mail is the thin end of a corporate wedge that threatens internet freedom and equality, the new order is likely here to stay. Yahoo comes aboard in August. "We're starting to look at Europe and Japan," says David Atlas, Goodmail's vice-president of marketing. "In the next couple of years we'll roll out worldwide."

Meanwhile, foes of certified mail have regrouped for the far bigger battle over network neutrality. They fear that without this "common carriage" principle the big players will dominate cyberspace.

In fact, the broadband companies already enjoy a quasi-monopoly. Back in the dial-up era Americans chose between some 6000 ISPs. Now over 70 per cent of Americans use broadband, and 98 per cent go online via a duopoly. "I live in New York," says Karr, "and have to chose between Verizon and Comcast."

Last year the Federal Communications Commission, which polices broadcasting, classified broadband as an information service, rather than a telecommunication service, weakening network neutrality.

The FCC's move raised the question of whether ISPs could offer faster service to companies that paid the most. To detractors this evokes a scenario in which ISPs "discriminate" in their own interest, directing traffic to boost profits. For instance, a server might promote one search engine over another, so that Yahoo, say, loads faster than Google. Or, suggests Karr, Comcast "might degrade access" to iTunes, Apple's online music store and give the nod to its own music store.

Consumers will still be able to access Google or iTunes, provided they wait. But in a broadband world where speed is king, is this fair? It doesn't matter if an email takes a few seconds to appear. But it matters enormously if download delays uncouple synched video sound and image.

All of which gives the non-corporate cyber community palpitations. The internet was built around the notion of end-to-end-users. But if the law is rewritten, so that the giants like AT&T can squat on the highway and charge tolls, could this harm innovation by barring poorer users?

The stakes are huge and being closely watched by foreign broadband operators, such as Germany's Deutsch Telekom. Yet, short of a successful insurrection by opponents, many fear the cable and telephone giants will push Washington to neutralise net neutrality. Network neutrality has played a key role in the internet's emergence as a dynamic and innovative forum, one in which users feel that they are gatekeepers, able to seek out their own interests and entertainment, rather than having it foisted on them.

Or, as a media analyst with the Washington Post put it: "Unfettered internet access has come to be seen by Americans in general as not just a privilege or a product, but a right akin to free speech and free association." Most of us would agree.