from Snopes.com:
The “Al Gore said he ‘invented’ the Internet” put-downs were misleading, out-of-context distortions of something he said during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “Late Edition” program on 9 March 1999: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.”

It is quite true that Gore helped create the internet from Arpanet, a Dept. of Defense designed, non-commerical network connecting only universities and government labs over leased lines. In 1990, this network was opened to commercial use which eventually drove the cost of entry low enough for folks like you and me to participate in it. Right wing radio and television hosts distorted Gore’s statement to disparage him for months during then V.P. Gore’s presidential bid, essentially ignoring the huge impact the creation of an ‘open’ internet had on our society. Unfortunately, no one seemed to be paying much attention yesterday when our
Republican led Congress voted down the Markey amendment to the COPE bill which would have codified and enforced the concept of network neutrality, a move which could eventually lead to the end of the internet we’ve come to know and love.Network Neutrality is a relatively new term that is as yet, poorly defined or understood. A better description might be ‘broadband discrimination’ which gets at the heart of the idea. ISPs provide a user’s connection to the network, and determine that user’s speed of connection, and access rights. It’s likely that as a user, you are denied access to certain parts of the internet by your ISP and that you don’t even know it. Although the vast number of users may not care that they are missing out on some sites, they usually do get grumpy when their connection speed is slowed down. But the importance of this kind of protection for users of the internet cannot be understated. Currently, most users can operate as equal participants on the internet, publishing their content (as I do), selling their wares, communicating with nearly everyone else equally. The concept of equal participation on the internet may not be universally understood, but once it’s gone, folks may start to realize what they’ve lost.

The Markey amendment to HR5252 was anethema to the ISPs because it would have restricted the major ISPs from domination and control of, perhaps we could say to monopolize, the internet. The ISP’s colluded to create fake ‘grass-roots’ groups to lobby Congress to strike the amendment in our name. What was so horrible? Here’s are excerpts from the amendment:

(b) In General, each broadband network provider has the duty -

1. not to block, impair, degrade, discriminate against, or interfere with the ability of any person to use a broadband connection to access, use, send, receive, or offer lawful content, applications, or services over the internet.
2. to operate its broadband network in a non-discriminatory manner so that any person can offer or provide content, applications, and services through, or over, such broadband network with equivalent or better capability than the provider extends to itself or affiliated parties, and without the imposition of a charge for such nondiscriminatory network operation;
3. to enable a user to attach and use any device to the operator’s network that does not physically damage, make unauthorized use of, or materially degrade other user’s utilization of, the network
4. to clearly and conspicuously disclose to users, in plain language, accurate information about the speed, nature, and limitations of their broadband connection.

The ISPs claim that they need to be able to charge to provide better access to certain customers. In other words, they’d like to be able to slow down the response users get from one website company (let’s say ebay) if another website company (let’s say Amazon) pays them more money. Users will become fed up trying to get ebay to load, and go to Amazon. The ISPs claim they need the money to improve the infrastructure of the internet to support the new technologies that broadband connections have brought to bear. This argument doesn’t seem viable to me since they would be in a position to exploit network bottlenecks to make bigger profits, what real incentive would they have to improve user’s connection speeds in that scenario? Also, during the 90’s the backbone of the internet was built out to accomodate the huge growth we didn’t see when all the dotcommies collapsed. We’re only now starting to bounce back, and as I understand it, we have way more capacity than we currently need. (This is really hearsay, and I would of course, appreciate feedback on that statement from anyone more in-the-know than myself).

on to the Senate!