Senator John Kerry is up in arms. And no, it has nothing to do with Clinton, Obama, McCain or even Iraq. Recently, Kerry wrote a post for the popular Huffington Post blog in which he detailed a despicable occurrence that took place at the FCC hearing in Cambridge with Comcast concerning Net Neutrality. As if its move to block certain content a few months back wasn’t bad enough, Comcast actually stooped to paying people off the streets to pack the seats that would have otherwise been given to the hundreds of concerned citizens left literally outside in the cold.

You may be thinking to yourself, “Who cares what John Kerry or the Huffington Post say, I’m a conservative!” Well, don’t take Kerry’s word for it. ERA’s own vice president of government affairs, Bill McClellan, was there in person to witness the entire debacle. As I described in an earlier post, Net Neutrality is one of ERA’s core government affairs initiatives, because keeping the Internet free and open is vital to everyone’s continued e-commerce success. With all this talk about repurposing infomercials and content on the Internet, how would you feel if Comcast decided your site was taking up too much bandwidth and they simply stopped allowing consumers access? They wouldn’t be that shameless, would they?

I can’t stress enough the amount of money, time and energy the telecos spend on Capitol Hill lobbying to take control of the Internet, dividing it into a two-tiered system. Are you concerned but don’t know what you can do to help? I encourage you to join ERA on May 20th on Capitol Hill for our annual Government Affairs Fly-In, where we will brief you on the issues and set you up with your elected representatives so that you can voice your concerns about the vitality of your business and its bottom line’s dependence on an open Internet.

Pat Cauley, eMedia Editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

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