Congratulations!

Time Warner Cable’s price-gouging scheme came crashing down yesterday.

In a spectacular victory for Free Press and supporters like you, the company buckled under public pressure and abandoned its plan to impose Internet penalties against those who go online for more than e-mail and basic Web surfing.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2009/04/16/internet-users-roar-cable-giant-blinks/

If they had gotten away with this scam, users of online innovations like Web video and radio would have been forced to pay up to $100 more per month for full broadband service.

Time Warner Cable didn’t cave because of a sudden spurt of good conscience. They reacted to a torrent of protest from Free Press members and from Internet users across the country.

Savor this victory, because it belongs to you. You proved –  again — that when we pull together, we can defend our online rights against even the biggest of Big Media giants.

But this fight isn’t over. The threat of this kind of price gouging is not going away. Big media companies like Time Warner Cable, Comcast and AT&T know that the new media landscape — with Internet users watching video at YouTube, listening to radio at Pandora and making phone calls using applications like Skype — is a threat to their monopoly control.

They’ll do whatever it takes to protect their profits and limit your freedoms.

Our victory is a lesson in what we’ll need to keep doing to stop these companies from squeezing our use of the Internet:

*  In less than a week, Free Press generated more than 16,000 letters to Congress, urging members to launch an immediate investigation of Time Warner Cable.

*  Our policy advocates are working with pro-Internet policymakers on Capitol Hill to stop these sorts of anti-competitive scams and make sure more Americans can get online.

*  Our media outreach fueled a withering barrage of negative press (including mention of our work in more than 50 prominent news stories), consumer complaints, blog postings and other opposition to Time Warner Cable’s scheme.

We’re entering a profoundly busy period for media reform issues like Net Neutrality and closing the digital divide. Your continued support today will go a long way toward strengthening our work in Washington and beyond.

https://secure.freepress.net/site/Donation2?df_id=1164&1164.donation=form1

This week’s victory over Time Warner Cable proved what we can do when we pull together. Pat yourself on the back!

And if you possibly can, help lay the groundwork for more victories in the weeks ahead by supporting Free Press right now.

https://secure.freepress.net/site/Donation2?df_id=1164&1164.donation=form1

Thanks for all you do,

Timothy Karr
Campaign Director
Free Press Action Fund
http://www.freepress.net/
http://www.savetheinternet.com/

P.S. Follow this link to read today’s blog post from Rep. Eric Massa of New York, who was instrumental in pressuring Time Warner Cable to back down.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2009/04/17/score-the-first-round-for-the-public/

Phillip Dampier is the force behind stopthecap.com. He was also the guy standing next to Sen. Schumer when it was announced the metered trials were 86ed.

Phillip was nice enough to stop by this site earlier today and share his thoughts in the comments:

This is NOT over. I thought it might have been over when I was standing right next to Sen. Schumer when he was doing his press conference. I was assured that this was as good as dead. When I got home, there was the TW press release.

Read the full comment here.

Kevin Brass homes right in on the fact that the TWC metering plan isn’t really about preserving network capacity, but about business models and suppressing competition.

Once Time Warner has its hand on the faucet, the cable company can exert huge power over the flow of the Internet. A quick reconfiguring of the tiers, a heartfelt note, and customers will be squeezed for a few more dollars, simply because they like to watch Saturday Night Live on Hulu instead of TV.

With users counting their gigabytes, Time Warner would then be able to wield more influence over content providers, perhaps negotiating deals with certain sites to allow consumers to download that site’s content without the surcharge – giving favored status to whichever company pays Time Warner. Such proposals have been floated in the past (triggering the “Net neutrality” debate), raising concerns that only big companies will gain access to networks, squashing innovation and smaller competitors.

Read the full article here: To the Cyber-Barricades!