• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, May 9, 2008

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) introduced a net neutrality bill Wednesday that would prohibit Internet service providers from blocking or degrading access to any "lawful content."

"It shall be unlawful for any broadband network provider ... to block, to impair, to discriminate against, or to interfere with the ability of any person to use a broadband network service," states the proposed measure, The Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (H.R. 5994).

The bill would allow ISPs to manage traffic, provided they don't discriminate between their own content and content by unaffiliated companies. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) is co-sponsoring the legislation.

Net neutrality advocates like Free Press, Public Knowledge, MoveOn.org and the Open Internet Coalition cheered the proposal. "We believe it is a positive step ... and will help ensure the Internet will be protected and remain open for all Americans," said Markham Erickson, executive director of the Open Internet Coalition, in a statement.

A spokesperson for Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who recently introduced a separate net neutrality bill (the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, H.R. 5353), declined to say whether he supports Conyers' proposal. Markey's proposed bill establishes a broad U.S. policy to support net neutrality, but does not contain regulations spelling out that Internet service providers can't degrade traffic or otherwise discriminate against Web publishers.

Previous efforts to pass net neutrality legislation were unsuccessful, but Congress turned its attention to the issue again this year, shortly after it was revealed that Comcast was interfering with some visits to bandwidth-intense peer-to-peer sites. Comcast has argued it was only trying to manage traffic on its network. In March, Comcast promised to develop a protocol agnostic method of managing traffic.