Editorial: Preserve Internet equality

Thursday, June 1, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.

British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee did not create the Internet, but he did, between the years 1989 and 1991, invent its most well-known component - the World Wide Web. Today the Web is threatened with a fundamental change that Berners-Lee opposes, as do we.

The Internet grew exponentially in the 1990s, when "dial-up" access reigned, because of a federal regulation designating telephone lines as "common carriers." This meant that phone companies could not block information traveling along their lines that originated from the Web, nor could they add premium charges.

Dial-up, however, is giving way rapidly to faster broadband connections available through cable modems and digital subscriber lines. And telecommunications companies that invested in the fiber-optic cables that make broadband possible have been making an impression in Congress with the argument that the common-carrier concept is obsolete.

These companies, including AT&T and Comcast, are making millions providing Web content of their own, such as communication and entertainment services. Now they want extra profits from their lines by offering two levels of service: Premium for those who pay extra, and marginal, comparatively anyway, for those who don't.

With so many advances in technology since the Internet came online for the general public, Congress is listening to these corporations as it prepares to update the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

We hope, in the end, that Congress is more influenced by Berners-Lee than the giant telephone and cable companies.

Berners-Lee, who now works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, rejects a two-tiered level of service, favoring instead a system known as "net neutrality." The idea of a premium charge should be dropped so that all Web providers can share equally in the latest technological advances, he says.

We agree. The democracy of the Internet, which now provides the solitary blogger and giant providers such as Google equal access to their customers, would change forever if Internet service providers gained the power to set variable transmission fees. If the common-carrier concept is scrapped, so too will be the Internet as we know it.