Gigi Sohn Quotations

The fact that it's a bipartisan bill is tremendously important.

The provisions will not stop the cable and telephone companies from degrading Internet traffic and they do not contain strong enough penalties to discourage misbehavior.

We're concerned that even if you have a robust basic Internet and higher-speed lane, they will only make it available to their favorite partners, and that's discrimination.

Should Congress grant video providers the extraordinary regulatory relief represented by national broadband video franchises -- turning nearly 40 years of local control of video services on its head -- Congress must also ensure net neutrality. Such a policy would ensure that those same companies make their broadband networks available to all applications, content and service providers on a nondiscriminatory basis.

My concern is they would say 'well you know we only have enough bandwidth to provide that quality of service for our service'.

Permitting broadband video providers to avoid negotiating thousands of individual franchise agreements will bring more competition to markets faster, resulting in greater consumer choice and lower prices.

One of the parts we really don't like is the net neutrality provision because it's extraordinarily weak. It does suffer from the same problem as the House bill to the extent that there's nothing about discrimination in there.

Basically this merger will mean even less competition for broadband Internet, and frankly that makes a Net neutrality requirement even more imperative. If there was real competition in the provision of high-speed Internet access we might not be having this conversation, but now the world has gotten even smaller than it was before.

pleased to see many of the pro-competitive features of the draft.

We are disappointed but not surprised that the committee voted to turn over the future of the Internet to the telephone and cable industry. Neither of those two sectors contributed to the creative development of the Internet, and neither is known for innovation. They are known for their desire to control what goes over their networks.

We were very pleased to see that Chairman Barton recognized the need for preserving the model of an open broadband network by codifying the duty of broadband providers to allow subscribers to have access to the services, equipment and applications they need without interference from network providers.

The subcommittee missed an opportunity to maintain the free and open Internet that we have come to value over the years. The amendment ... would have set fair and reasonable boundaries on the conduct of telephone and cable companies which now will have control over the Internet, while guaranteeing the rights of consumers.

This bill needs significant improvement before it will preserve the open Internet that consumers and service providers expect and deserve.

Think of the cable system. You as a consumer have no control over what channels the cable operator picks. They pick certain channels based on where they have a financial interest. Time Warner favors the programming in which it has financial interest. We're concerned that the cable model will essentially be grafted onto the InterNet.

This merger makes a net neutrality requirement all the more urgent.

They're just two different visions of the Internet. I see the Internet as something that gives people the power, for the first time ever, to have a megaphone. These guys want to make a closed system.

It is vitally important that the Internet remains open and accessible to consumers and to service providers and remains the source of innovation it has been over the past two decades.

It's not a recipe for piracy. It's a recipe for competition, which is what Apple really doesn't like.

This is a heck of a lot better than just going out and suing the daylights out of people. My concern is that people may give up rights they may have, such as the right to limited sharing.

You would be hard pressed to read this case to say that innovators will have to design their tech differently. I think the court was pretty clear in stating that the technological design is not a factor in determining inducement.

The future of the free, open and innovative Internet we have all enjoyed through the years is not guaranteed. If the bill before the House Commerce Committee gives control of the Internet to the telephone and cable companies, the Internet we have come to appreciate could well cease to exist, and it will be almost impossible to get it back.

The Internet we're come to know and love is at risk.