Dear President Obama:
We are writing to express strong support for Network Neutrality. An Internet free of gatekeepers is essential to economic innovation, job creation, free speech and democratic participation. This openness is vital to our success as organizers, activists and bloggers.
We were encouraged by your pledge in 2008 to “take a back seat to no one” in your commitment to Net Neutrality. When you entered the White House in 2009, you called working to “support the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet” the top priority of your technology platform, and you appointed as chair of the Federal Communications Commission someone who seemed to champion this view.
Today, however, we’re concerned that the White House and FCC are backing away from this commitment. There is much talk of “compromise” on this crucial issue, and reports of backroom meetings between FCC officials and lobbyists to cut a deal that would jeopardize the open Internet. Giving up on your pledge to protect Net Neutrality would be a serious and possibly irreversible mistake.
Without rules to prevent discrimination online, Internet service providers will be free to choose whose voices are more important and whose views will be heard. Net Neutrality promotes the broadest possible dissemination of all forms of speech. This openness is the reason the Internet has unleashed a tidal wave of civic participation and new political activism. Without it, our blogs, websites and online organizing efforts wouldn’t exist.
If the FCC fails to re-establish its authority to protect Internet users, your administration will not be able to carry out the National Broadband Plan and allow all Americans to share in the benefits the Internet has to offer. We risk falling even further behind the rest of the world in broadband adoption and missing out on the millions of jobs and technological advances an open Internet will create.
Since the fight for Net Neutrality began more than four years ago, nearly two million Americans from all walks of life have picked up the phone, signed petitions, written letters, recorded videos, and spoken out publicly to urge our leaders in Washington to get behind Net Neutrality. Without strong White House support and decisive action at the FCC, we could lose the Internet as we know it.
Please re-affirm your commitment to Net Neutrality and support quick and clear action by the FCC to regain its authority to protect the open Internet once and for all.
Sincerely,
Jim Dean and the leaders of over 30 organizations
