"Good Morning.  Today's hearing is on legislation offered by myself and subcommittee colleague Mr. Pickering, entitled the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (H.R. 5353). 

"Since the beginning of this Congress - indeed since our first subcommittee witness, the inventor of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee testified - we've held a series of hearings that have given us a glimpse of the future of the Internet.  We heard testimony from Chad Hurley, the founder of YouTube, as well as from top executives from TiVo, RealNetworks, Sling Media, and others. The commercial success of many of these companies, and their future business plans, are predicated upon openness in the Internet's architecture and the freedom to innovate that has marked the Internet since its inception.

"Sir Tim, the inventor of the World Wide Web, urged us to ‘make sure the Web itself is the blank sheet, the blank canvas, something that does not constrain the innovation around the corner.'

"The wonderful thing about the Internet, Sir Tim also reminded us, is that no one needs to ask anyone's permission to innovate, to get their voice heard, to launch a new service or business enterprise. In this sense, it is the most level playing field for commercial opportunity ever invented. And its world-wide scope has helped to foster community and cultural communications across the planet.

"Yet now we are faced with a choice. Can we preserve this wildly successful medium and the freedom it embodies, or do we permit network operators to fundamentally alter how the Internet has historically functioned?  Do we retain a level playing field - Sir Tim's ‘blank canvas' - for entrepreneurial entry, or do we allow the imposition of new fees and the artificial creation of slow lanes and fast lanes for content providers on the Internet?

"Some people might ask, ‘Well, at $500 a share, why can't Google pay for special treatment?'  The reality is that at $500 a share Google can afford to pay. Yet the reality is that this is precisely the wrong question to ask. Instead, the question is whether Larry Page and Sergei Brin - the two young founders of Google, could have paid when they were mere grad students launching their idea. 

"Same question for Jerry Yang of Yahoo back in the late 1990s, or Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, or Marc Andreessen, who invented the Mosaic browser - which later became Netscape - when he was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the early 90s.  That's the question to ask.

"And the answer, of course, is ‘no' - those inventors and entrepreneurs could not have created the companies that have become part of Internet lore if they had had to pay cable or phone companies large sums of money up front just to get access to consumers.

"This debate is not over whether carriers can or cannot perform network management.  It is not about whether carriers can fight piracy, or spam, or help parents with content controls.  It is not about whether some network traffic, such as emergency communications, can be prioritized.  Neither is it about whether ‘network neutrality' is synonymous with ‘copyright theft.' It is not, and the legislation only extends Internet freedom principles to lawful content. All of these things have been done for years and are being done today without problems.

"The question is whether in the name of network management, policymakers permit carriers to act in unreasonable, anti-competitive fashion.  In a more perfect network, there would be such massive bandwidth to render these issues moot. In a more perfect marketplace, there would be 4 or 5 high-speed broadband competitors offering consumers ample choice. 

"But until then, I strongly believe we should enshrine basic principles of openness and fairness and ensure that the FCC is a ‘cop on the beat' able to ensure these principles are upheld in the marketplace.  In this way we can preserve the best of what the Internet is even as it evolves. 

"The bill is quite straightforward.  It establishes overarching principles, rather than regulations, to guide policy in this area.  It then it requests an examination of the market and current practices, requires the FCC to hold several broadband summits around the country to solicit suggestions and opinion, and finally, tasks the FCC with reporting the results and any recommendations back to Congress.  I believe this is an eminently reasonable path to pursue and I thank all of our witnesses for coming today to give us their views on the bill.  Thank you."