Lofgren: No Network-Neutrality Legislation This Session
Democratic Rep. from California appears on C-SPAN's The Communicators .
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/18/2008 10:15:00 AM
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said she doesn't expect any network-neutrality legislation to pass in this session of Congress -- a pretty safe bet as the session dwindles and legislators turn to re-electing themselves and their party colleagues.
Lofgren, who represents a portion of Silicon Valley, gave that assessment in an interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators.
But she added that she expected the issue to "finally get settled" if Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) wins the White House. "He gets it," she said.
Obama told B&C in an interview last month that neutrality “is what makes the Internet such a democratizing" tool and that it needed to be defended, adding that network-neutrality legislation that has been proposed would protect nondiscriminatory network management.
Lofgren said she absolutely backed Google's argument that "the pipes can't be allowed to control the content," adding that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) agreed.
Lofgren said the selection of what content Internet users access should not be up to the Internet-service providers. "That would be cable TV-izing the Internet, and we can't allow that," she added.
Lofgren signed onto a bill that says antitrust law is sufficient to enforce network neutrality and she said that is preferable to the "slightly more regulatory" approach of a bill introduced by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Telecommunications & Internet Subcommittee, which she said "is not terrible" and which she also co-sponsored.
But she also said that if the Federal Communications Commission can "make it happen" without legislation, that would be fine, too, calling network neutrality "a freedom issue for the world."
