Imagine if the Internet were like cable TV.
You pay $40 a month to Time Warner or Comcast, and you get a menu of 80 websites to visit.
Want to go to a site devoted to Japanese anime cartoons? Sorry, that's not on the menu. Looking for that crazy blog about the history of matchbook covers? No longer available — or so slow to load it's not worth your while.
That scenario could become real, some Internet mavens say, unless Congress acts quickly to preserve freedom of the Web. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision has opened the door to greater corporate control of the Internet, and big business is ready to walk through it.
"The small guy is not going to be able to get his word out," said Elliot Cohen, a Florida-based media scholar and author. "If these companies get their way, content providers with deep pockets will get optimum bandwidth, and the rest of us will be spinning slowly in cyberspace.
"The greatest democratic forum that was ever devised by humanity will go by the wayside."
But broadband Internet providers say they don't want to restrict access to the Web — they want to offer consumers more choices.
More video, faster online games, home teleconferencing — all would be possible if broadband providers could charge different rates for different Internet services, they say.
The debate is over "net neutrality." It's the subject of at least four proposed laws in Congress.
Net neutrality means that everyone who hooks up to the Internet is treated equally. The website fr the Phillips Neighborhood Network in Minneapolis gets its traffic routed as efficiently as CNN.com.
But net neutrality is also about who pays for the Internet. Cable and phone companies, which provide the network for broadband Internet traffic, have watched Google, Yahoo and other Web businesses get rich using their "pipes."
The cable and phone companies think they should get a bigger piece of the Internet pie. Rather than just collect monthly fees from subscribers, broadband providers want businesses that use the Web to pay them higher rates for premium services, such as faster connections and higher levels of security.
They also want the ability to steer their broadband customers to those premium sites. In theory, broadband providers could even block access to websites that refused to pay extra fees, although one major provider — AT&T — has pledged not to do that.
Advocates of net neutrality argue that the Internet is a quasi-public service, like the electric grid or the telephone lines. Giving preferred treatment to certain websites, they say, would be akin to the telephone company offering better phone connections to whichever florist or car dealer paid it the most money.
Partisans on both sides say the future of the Internet rides on how lawmakers settle the issue.
"Our goal is to ensure that the Internet is an open system for anyone, anywhere to use," U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said in an interview. "We're very concerned about big companies acting as gatekeepers, charging tolls. We think that will ruin the Internet."
Dorgan is co-author of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, which would prohibit broadband Internet service providers from "blocking, degrading or prioritizing service on their networks."
Broadband providers such as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon say that without extra fees from preferred customers, they won't have money to upgrade their networks and invest in new technology.
AT&T, Verizon and Comcast declined interviews.
"Net neutrality proponents would actually limit choices and options for Internet users," Ed Whitacre, chief executive officer of AT&T, said in a statement. "They say it is unfair for Internet users and content providers to pay different prices for different levels of speed, reliability and security.
"It's like saying we should add no more lanes to a highway that is increasingly congested."
No longer a common carrier
Ever since the Internet began some 30 years ago as a way of letting computers talk to one another, net neutrality has been a key principle. Internet service providers were considered common carriers, meaning they had to route all traffic, regardless of destination.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Internet was more like cable TV: a one-way transmitter of information. Just as cable companies choose what programs they offer on their channels, broadband providers would be allowed to choose what Web content they transmit.
Ralph Jenson, a Woodbury technology consultant, was a founder of Gofast.net, one of the first Internet service providers in the Twin Cities. The broadband companies, he said, are losing sight of why the Internet was created.
"It wasn't just for them to connect to their customers," Jenson said. "It was for everybody to connect to everybody else. A guy who sets up a new site and it gets hot, they're going to come to him and ask for more money, and he's going to have to shut down. And there goes innovation."
Those on the other side point out that there are already different service tiers and financial deals on the Internet. Some customers pay less for slow dial-up connections, while others pay more for faster broadband service.
And Google, a loud proponent of net neutrality, gives priority in its search listings to companies that pay to be at the top of the list.
"The common carrier is a model for 1910, not 2010," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economic fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. "You charge people based on what they use.
"My take on the really big stakes here is, who will build the Internet capacity of the future? And the sad truth is that no one is going to do that unless they have the money, through pricing, to put it in."
Dorgan said freedom of the Web is an important tool of democracy.
"The Internet is changing the way we communicate and the way ideas are exchanged and considered," he said. "We can't have the Internet become a proprietary playground."