Free Press, Google and Others Form Pro-Broadband Initiative

NEW YORK, June 24 – A group of non-profits, businesses and other organizations seeking to guide the creation of a national broadband plan on Tuesday announced the formation of a new initiative, “Internet for Everyone,” seeking to highlight the crucial importance of broadband.

The initiative was officially launched at a breakout room in the Lincoln Center where the Personal Democracy Forum was being held, gathering internet luminaries including Stanford University professor Lawrence Lessig; Vint Cerf, chief technology evangelist at Google; Tim Wu, Columbia University law professor; and Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press.

Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein announced the organization’s formation in his address at the Personal Democracy Forum. Adelstein said that broadband policy was integral to all of the major issues of this election. Adelstein was also set to be on hand at the initiative’s press conference.

Among the organizations also listed as supporters on the organization’s Web page include the American Civil Liberties Union, BitTorrent, Common Cause, the Computers and Communications Industry Association, Consumers Union, eBay, Internet2 and the Sunlight Foundation.

Free Press, a non-profit group against media consolidation and for Net Neutrality, is taking the lead in convening the Internet for Everyone organization, said Timothy Karr, campaign director for Free Press. Free Press registered the domain name internetforeveryone.org.

“We are at a point in the U.S. where the country that is credited for having invented the Internet, has fallen perilously behind other nations that have managed to provide faster, cheaper and more open connections for a large portion of their populations,” Karr said in an interview.

On its Web site, the Internet for Everyone initiative articulates four broad principles: access, choice, openness and innovation. Although the terms are not defined, the principle on “openness” suggests a pro-Net Neutrality bent in its language: “every Internet user should have the right to freedom of speech and commerce online in an open market without gatekeepers or discrimination.”

The site proclaims the need to “unleash innovation, promote free speech and encourage learning.” It also declares that “we all must play a role in the future of the Internet: federal, state and local governments, businesses large and small, non-profits, consumer advocates, educators, civic groups, churches and individuals.”

In his speech, Adelstein affirmed that while private sector will drive future broadband deployment in the U.S., the government should have a greater role in incentivizing and expediting broadband deployment. He also said that broadband in the U.S. was “suffer[ing] from benign neglect and it’s time for that [to] change.”

Adelstein also said he wanted to see a better integration of internet technologies into government to improve governance and civic participation. “We’ve never seen the kind of political participation that at least one campaign has brought to this election through the technologies enabled by broadband,” the Commissioner observed, referring to the success of the campaign of Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Adelstein expressed the hope of bringing “that same type of energy to the government itself.”

-Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com, contributed to the reporting of this article.

Related Article:

Baller: McCain and Obama Should Issue Joint Statement on Broadband, BroadbandCensus.com, June 23