The telecom slayers

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 12:14:00 +0000

Ben Scott is smiling like a man who just hit the jackpot. As one of the coordinators of SavetheInternet.com, Scott is a leading advocate for Net neutrality, a congressional provision that would prohibit Internet service providers from charging Web sites for faster delivery of data. Scott is the closest thing there is to a field general in the grass-roots campaign to ensure Net neutrality, waging a daily battle with telecom giants AT&T and Verizon, who stand to boost their profits by creating toll roads on their Internet lines.

For more than a year, telecom lobbyists, who include former Bill Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry, have outgunned Scott and his ragtag army of bloggers, Internet entrepreneurs and consumer-rights activists on Capitol Hill. But on this fall day in his bare-bones office in Washington, Scott is grinning in victory. He knows he has succeeded in tripping up the lobbying goliaths with a simple weapon that couldn't be more appropriate in the battle over the Internet: a low-budget video posted on YouTube.com.

Salon.com > Daniel W. Reilly

The telecom slayers