The federal House of Representatives just passed some very bad legislation. Its the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement (COPE) Act. Nice sounding name isn’t it? Unfortunately it is too greatly influenced by lobbyists from Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast.

One of the things it does not do is protect network neutrality. What is network neutrality you say? It says that the providers of the roads (see named companies and others) can not charge for getting on or off the road. Basically it makes the internet content free.

Why is this important? Because of sites like this, or oaimages.com or priceofeverything.com or the vast array of hobbyist and enthusiast oriented sites can’t afford to pay for the “privilege” of getting access to the fast lanes of the internet.

Find out if your congressperson voted for or against the Lamar Smith amendment. This was a pseudo-amendment so they could say they ‘voted for’ network neutrality when in fact the amendment does no such thing. Its one of those look good-type amendments. We need Congress to stay out of the internet as they’ve shown how good they are at running so much else in this country. We need the internet to be free.

For more information on this, check out this web-site – click on the iamge:

Also, send a note to your congressman and your senators. The senators are debating this in the Commerce Committee. We need to get legislation in there so it has a chance in committee (but with all of the lobbying dollars behind it, I’m not hopeful.) This is an example where the power of the few, with a lot of money, can set a legislative agenda that helps them at the harm of the rest of the country. I don’t buy it when ATT, VZ and Comcast say ‘trust us.’ Do you?