Here’s a really simple net neutrality definition:

Net neutrality is a principle that bars Internet providers, primarily phone and cable companies, from charging higher rates to Web-based firms in return for giving their content priority treatment on the pathways to consumers. Without such restrictions, proponents say, a user might find it time-consuming, or even impossible, to call up a favorite site that carriers have relegated to slower lanes for economic or even philosophical reasons.

Neutrality On the Net Gets High ’08 Profile: Tech Issue Gains Traction in Election, By Charles Babington, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, February 20, 2007; Page D01

The same article notes that this issue is “obscure to many Americans.” It shouldn’t be: it affects everyone, Republican, Democrat, gun owner, or urbanite.

The article’s main point is that net neutrality has become a political issue because “bloggers and other Internet activists” are making it so. The article claims “Unlike their Republican counterparts, every major Democratic presidential candidate has endorsed net neutrality.”

However, the issue is more basic than partisan politics:

The debate’s partisan nature has surprised and disappointed some advocates, who note that conservative groups such as the Christian Coalition of America and the Gun Owners of America are part of the SavetheInternet coalition. The Christian Coalition of America, in its policy statement, said net neutrality is “extremely important to America’s grassroots organizations and those Americans who want to ensure the cable and phone companies controlling access to the Internet will not discriminate against groups like Christian Coalition of America.” Michele Combs, a spokeswoman for the Christian Coalition of America, said that net neutrality is a nonpartisan matter and that “the conservative side has not been educated on the issue.”

MoveOn.org officials agree that net neutrality should transcend political lines. “There’s a growing online people-powered movement that has increasing relevance in our politics,” said Adam Green, a spokesman for MoveOn.org. “An issue like net neutrality, which directly taps into Internet issues, . . . could have a special energy in the political season,” he said. “Every Republican and Democrat who uses the Internet is threatened by corporations that want to control which Web sites people can access.”

After all, if you’re a conservative Christian convinced of the liberal bias of the media, where better to get your message out than through the Internet? And if you’re a liberal activist convinced of the conservative bias of the media, where better to get your message out than through the Internet? Unless, of course, the telco and cableco duopoly doesn’t give your web servers enough performance priority for your readers to find it useful, or decides to give priority to their chosen search engine that happens to forget to index your causes, or….

Net neutrality is about freedom of speech and of the press as much as it is about economics. It should be a political issue, backed by all parties.

-jsq