"Imagine if the leaders of 16th century Germany, feeling threatened by the democratizing forces of the printing press, had taken Gutenberg's invention and limited its use to those they politically agreed with -- or if Luther had to pay licensing fees for nailing up his 95 Theses on every church door in Germany," writes Craig Newmark (pictured) in an opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, June 11.

Actually, one can imagine that Luther faced far greater pressures from the Catholic Church in those days than anyone faces from telecommunications companies today, and Germany per se did not exist in those days, being a loosely coupled part of the Holy Roman Empire.

But Newmark's point in the column, in which he also invokes the name of Thomas Paine as well as many current political activists, is that many of the grassroots efforts spawned by the lack of barriers to entry in the status quo of the Internet and Worldwide Web are threatened by legislation now being debated in Washington, DC. House bill HR5252 passed by a 3 to 1 margin last week, a bill that is supported by the telcos and strongly opposed by recent Silicon Valley giants eBay, Yahoo, and Google, as well as Microsoft.

The leglislation now moves to the Senate as bill s.2686. If passed, the two legislative bodies will hammer out a consensus bill and present it to President Bush for signature.

A wide variety of organizations, including the Christian Coalition of America (a group that largely owes its existence to Martin Luther), are banding to oppose the legislation. One opponent, Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), invoked Lewis and Clark in her defense of Net Neutrality.

Meanwhile, propronents of this legislation quietly push forward their agenda, which they claim is largely based on "consumer choice" as well as incentives to invest in the Internet's future. Columnist John Dvorak said in the wake of the House vote last week that backers of Net Neutrality assume "that officials are not bought and sold by the big carriers. I don't think it has much of a chance."

Earlier SYS-CON reporting on this issue can be found here. Newmark's piece can be found at www.sfgate.com by searching for his name.