Snowe Supports Net Neutrality

The LA Times published an article today on how Maine Senator Olympia Snowe has become a pivotal advocate for net neutrality.

Calling her "an unlikely Internet heroine," the paper writes that "[t]he 59-year-old Republican senator from Maine isn't among the 170 Capitol Hill lawmakers who occasionally meet as part of the Congressional Internet Caucus. Her home state has no major technology company headquarters. In fact, she cops to not even being proficient at surfing the Web.

"But Snowe has emerged as one of the key leaders in a legislative battle over toll lanes on the Internet.

"Bucking her own party leadership, she has championed the push by Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and other Internet giants to prohibit phone and cable TV companies from charging websites for faster delivery of their data. The issue, known as network neutrality, threatens to kill a wide-ranging telecommunications bill that Senate leaders hope to pass this fall." (Here's the link to the full text of the article.)

Back in May, contributing editor Bob Litan wrote this op-ed column in the Washington Post. In it, he suggested that net neutrality sounded good but would actually discourage the development of the Internet by taking away from broadband companies the incentive to increase and improve capacity.

That same month in Inc., Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and co-founder of weblog community Global Voices, wrote this Opinion column voicing support for preserving net neutrality.

It's a tricky question... where do you stand?

Mike Hofman was previously editor of Inc.com and a deputy editor at Inc. magazine, which he joined in 1996. The site was nominated for a National Magazine Award for Digital Media in 2010, and was named the best business website by Folio Magazine. In 2006, Hofman was part of a team of writers nominated for a Webby Award for best business blog. He lives in New York City. @mikehofman