A Town Square, Not a Strip Mall

Ethan Strimling, All Towns

(Cross-posted at DailyKos)

It’s not often a lawmaker gets a chance to help concretely shape the future of a revolutionary technology, but I’m proud that I’ve had such an opportunity.

Senator Ted Stevens, about a year and a half ago, made one of the most ridiculous analogies I’ve ever heard:

And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes.

Lost in the laughter at Sen. Stevens’s statement was the underlying argument he was trying to make: if the Internet has limited capacity, we should ration that capacity to the highest bidder and allow everyone else to be drowned out or shoved aside.

I'm proud to have stood against that attitude when I introduced and lead the effort to pass the first state-based Net Neutrality bill in America.

The difference between a non-neutral and a neutral network is stark. It is the difference between a strip mall and a town square. It is the difference between people as consumers and people as citizens. Consumers consume, but citizens communicate, collaborate, and create.

Net Neutrality made it possible for the modern internet to develop as it has. The level playing field of a neutral internet meant that, instead of CitiBank or Chase Manhattan, we could choose to work through ActBlue. It gave us the freedom to have extensive online local classifieds in every major city, thanks to CraigsList. It meant that millions of people could read the political views (and piano compositions) of an ex-soldier from California and base a revolutionary political movement around his site.

I take a broad view of Net Neutrality. In my view, Net Neutrality is the principle that no third party should interfere in the channels of communication between users of the Internet, and that no channel should be prioritized or discriminated against. The Internet should not be designed to funnel users into narrow silos of services controlled by a handful of large corporations. Rather, it should be designed to maximize communication, collaboration, and democratic participation.

The Internet should be, above all else, an instrument of liberty.

It was this belief in the potential of the Internet, and the need to protect it, that led me to introduce LD 1675, which this summer became the first Net Neutrality bill passed by any state in the country.

While I’m proud to have supported Net Neutrality in Maine, it’s clear that the Internet needs protection at the federal level. I will make it a priority to pass Network Neutrality legislation when I am in the US Congress.

The decisions we make now about the Internet will impact our lives for decades to come. Without strong federal protection for Net Neutrality, a handful of large corporations will be able to shape the Internet to suit their business models, rather than shaping their business models to succeed on the Internet. This would stifle innovation. This would undermine the Internet's astounding potential to foster communication and democratic participation.

This is why, just as I took the lead in the Maine Senate on Net Neutrality, I will be a leader in the US Congress on this crucial issue.

We stand at a crucial time in the evolution of the Internet. There is currently a great tension between those who would consolidate and control the Internet, and those of us who want to see the Internet continue to grow and thrive as a distributed and decentralized medium for communication, collaboration, and democratic participation. With your help, we can keep the Net free.

Thanks for your support,

-Ethan