Washington, DC- Today, the Chief Executive Officers of Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft, eBay, Yahoo!, and the InterActive Corp. sent a letter to the Chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), urging Members of Congress to tighten the language on net neutrality in the Barton Telecommunications bill.  Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA), the Ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, and author of an amendment to preserve “Network Neutrality” rules for the Internet and prohibit Internet service providers from discriminating against content providers released the following statement on the importance of net neutrality:

“Today we are debating merits of the fundamental architecture of the Internet, as we know it.  The bill before us would allow for artificial constraints to the supply of Internet-based content and services to high-bandwidth consumers.  This represents nothing more than the imposition of a broadband bottleneck tax on electronic commerce.  Such a bottleneck tax for accessing consumers will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on investment and innovation.

“There are some out there who will inevitably ask the question, ‘But why shouldn’t Google pay?’  Google certainly has a very large market cap and presumably could afford to pay.  But that is precisely the wrong question to ask.  The question to ask is whether Larry Page and Sergey Brin could have afforded to pay circa 1998, whether Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang could have afforded to pay a broadband behemoth circa 1995, whether Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape, could have afforded to pay anyone, anything, circa 1994. 

“If there is an entrepreneur in some proverbial garage somewhere today, whose idea is new, whose product is still in ‘beta,’ their dreams are just as real and valid as Larry’s, Sergey’s, Jerry’s, and Marc’s were an Internet-generation ago.  We should be doing everything we can in public policy to ensure that this successful Internet model continues to drive innovation, economic growth, and job creation.

“I am offering an amendment aimed to protect the openness of the internet and prevent companies from setting up road blocks on the information superhighway.”

Representative Markey has been a long time champion of fostering innovation and protecting the rights of consumers. For copies of both the Markey Network Neutrality Amendment and the letter from the CEO’s, along with video from today’s markup, check out: http://markey.house.gov/

 Copy of Net Neutrality Amendment (44.44 KB)
 Copy of Letter from CEOs (11.08 KB)