You’ve probably heard rumblings about this little term called Net Neutrality. “Net Neutrality?” you say. Is the Internet moving to Switzerland? or perhaps Sweden? Laughs aside, it’s a really serious issue – serious enough that I’m posting about it because it potentially affects efforts to use tools like the wiki in education.

The Net Neutrality debate is over a proposal by some telecom industry executives to establish a tiered system for access and pricing – which would obviously favor those with deep pockets. The execs argue that they should be able to make money from the content moving through their pipes by charging web site publishers to give their data higher priority.

In an effort to put his money where his mouth is, Jeff Pulver has started Jeff Pulver’s Viral Marketing Contest to Save the Internet. He argues that if bloggers are really on the cutting edge, “Shouldn’t we be the creative forces verifying that the medium is the message? Who better than us to harness the enabling power of the Internet to bring our message to legislators, to policymakers, to the public?¹” He’s looking for people to submit ideas for short videos and marketing campaigns to let legislators in Congress know that we don’t want legislation passed that permits telecom executives to create an Internet caste system.
Vint Cerf has spoken out against tiered internet.
Columbia Law School Professor Timothy Wu has spoken out.
Catherine Yang of BusinessWeek explains what’s “At Stake: The Net as We Know It”
San Francisco Chronicle writer David Lazarus has spoken out.
Rep. Edward Markey has spoken out.
It’s time for you to speak out too.

Every blogger, regardless of what topic you normally blog about, should post about Net Neutrality. Your readers deserve to know what’s at stake, and a large scale effort will again demonstrate the power bloggers have to speak with a loud enough voice to counter corporations with big money. Think about the statement we can all make – millions of bytes of content defending net neutrality flow through the pipes of big telcos like AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest – that’s voting with your feet.