Coming Soon to an Internet Near You: China-Style Censorship in the US

The US House of Representatives struck a major blow against our Internet freedom the other day, voting for the so-called Communications, Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006.

This disastrous bill, if also passed by the Senate, would take away the principle of “Net Neutrality”–that every website gets to load as fast as the server can manage and be found as easily as it shows up in the search engines. A vast coalition of 752 groups on both the left and right joined forces to block this bill, but the House passed it 321-101, including 92 Democrats.

Contact your Senators NOW and speak out against this bill–or face a world in which not the government but big telecommunications corporations effectively decide which websites you will see, and promote the sites that pay them the most. The Internet has been the backbone of the independent press, one of the last bastions of people unafraid to tell the real news. We must protect our rights to view these sites, read these blogs, watch these videos–and if content providers have to pay for the privilege of having their sites accessed, that channel will dry up mighty fast. Our browsers will be sold to the highest bidder, and that will not be the alternative voices.

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Shel Horowitz is the award-winning author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and five other books, and the creator of the Business Ethics Pledge to make crooked business as unthinkable in the future as slavery is today.