Save Access

from: SavetheInternet

When Astroturf Calls

May 18, 2007

Companies fighting the drive to make Net Neutrality the online law of the land are back with more shady tactics designed to confuse the public over the issue.

Media Minutes reports today that people in Oregon are receiving automated telemarketing calls urging them “to call Senator Gordon Smith to oppose any congressional intervention into the Net Neutrality debate.”

The recorded message portrays the issue as a fight between phone and cable companies and big Internet firms like Google and Yahoo, when in reality Network Neutrality is not a battle of corporate titans but a grassroots concern that rallied the support of more than 1.5 million Internet users.

It is more about the rights of citizens, small businesses, bloggers, musicians and independent Web sites to freely communicate online without having the phone and cable companies discriminate against their content in favor of data from larger corporations.

A bill to restore Network Neutrality called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act is pending in Senate and has 10 sponsors so far including Oregon’s other Senator, Ron Wyden.

These “robo-calls” in Oregon never mention where they are coming from or who paid for the uninvited intrusion.

Elsewhere, a group calling itself the American Consumer Institute emerged from obscurity touting a new report which claims that a federal Net Neutrality law would cost consumers billions of dollars in higher Internet connection fees.

The problem is the American Consumer Institute is nothing but a front for a former chief economist of the phone company now known as Verizon — who also moonlights as a consultant for the telecom industry.

If you go to the ACI Website, however, nowhere does it mention this obvious conflict of interest.

Curiously, when three leading trade representatives for the phone, cable and wireless industries were pressed before Congress yesterday to list their biggest concerns about regulations and their impact on providing faster Internet services to more Americans, none mentioned Net Neutrality as a problem.

So why is it that they’re spending tens of millions of dollars on phony Astroturf efforts to mislead the public on the issue? Stay tuned.