“The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.” — Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1810. ME 12:417
This basic foundation of our system of government, that a well-informed electorate is necessary for liberty to be preserved, has been more of an ideal than anything practical. Physical, professional, educational and financial barriers have generally precluded large segments of the citizenry from having access to vital information about their government and the ways in which decisions are reached. Public libraries opened up opportunities to greater numbers of people, yet still barriers persist. The Internet has the great potential to put most of the world’s libraries at ANYONE’S fingertips, yet still cost of access and the costs of computers bar many, a problem that has been slowly eroding as mobile devices and cheap wireless access spreads across the globe. Unfortunately, low-cost access to the internet lags here in the United States compared to some countries. Activists have been pushing in many places to make cheap access available to all by setting up Municipal WiFi networks, with some success.
That will all come to an end if Pete Session’s bill H.R. 2726 passes, a bill ironically titled the Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act of 2005.
From Liberal Street Fighter
You can read details of the issues on numerous activists’ websites and now Steven Levy has highlighted the bill in his column The Technologist in the July 18th issue of Newsweek:
Pulling the Plug on Local Internet
Guess who wants to stop you from getting universal, citywide wireless cheaper than you get it now?
Pete Sessions, a Texas member of the House, believes in states’ rights. But he also thinks that there are situations so extreme that Congress must slap down state and local government initiatives. One such case: localities that offer citizens free or low-cost Internet service. Idealists may view extending high-speed Internet as a boon to education, an economic shot in the arm and a vital component in effective emergency services. Sessions (who once worked for telecom giant SBC) sees it as local-government meddling in the marketplace—”trying to pick winners and losers,” he says—and thus justifies federal meddling to stop elected officials from giving their constituents a stake in the 21st century.
Funny how the rhetoric of freedom spills so easily from the lips of winger politicians UNTIL the interests of their business cronies come under assault, then they can’t restrict people’s rights fast enough.
The stakes are high, as the folks at NYC Wireless describe it:
No less than the future of all communications is at stake. In a few years, television, telephone, radio and the Web will be accessed through a high-speed internet connection. Low-cost alternatives to telephone (DSL) and cable monopolies are emerging across the country, as cities, towns, nonprofits and community groups build low-cost “Community Internet” and municipal broadband systems.
Companies like SBC, Verizon and Comcast have been introducing laws state by state that would prohibit municipal broadband, undercut local control and prevent competition. But we’ve been fighting back — and winning.
An alliance of public interest groups, local officials, high-tech innovators and organized citizens have defeated anti-municipal broadband measures in nine of the 13 states where they’ve been introduced this year.
What the industry couldn’t pass in the states, they’re trying to push through in Washington. Sessions’ bill — the “Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act” (an Orwellian title if there ever was one) — would prevent state and local governments from providing “any telecommunications service, information service or cable service” anywhere a corporation offers a similar service.
Congressman Sessions worked for telephone giant SBC for 16 years, and his wife currently serves as a director of Cingular Wireless, an SBC subsidiary. SBC and its employees have been Sessions’ second-biggest career patron, pouring more than $75,000 into his campaign coffers..
freepress.net has a petition they are circulating to kill Session’s bill. So far the bill has no co-sponsers, and anybody who does should be targeted quickly to pressure them to withdraw their support.
Technology has created a great opportunity to allow broad numbers of citizens to communicate with each other, and to access broad amounts of information, about the actions of our government, large corporations and the elected officials bought and paid for BY those corporations. It’s essential that this new flowering of communication be allowed to grow. As Levy describes it in his column:
Using “mesh” networks that run on the Wi-Fi wireless standard, cities can deliver the Internet affordably to everyone within their boundaries. “We can cover a city for a fraction of the cost of the traditional providers,” says Ron Sege of Tropos, a company that installs shoe-box-size devices that beam the Net from street lamps. This enables cities like Philadelphia to launch nonprofit efforts to make whole neighborhoods into hotspots: public spaces get free access, and citizens who use the service at home or around town are billed less than $20 a month. “We all have to compete in a knowledge economy,” explains Dianah Neff, the city’s chief information officer, who says the current providers focus excessively on the affluent.
H.R. 2726 must NOT be allowed to pass.