Net Neutrality lost in the House. Timothy Wu, an Internet policy expert at Columbia University, explains that ending Net Neutrality means adopting a "Tony Soprano business model." Ending Net Neutrality is a return to failed, pre-17th Century views of basic transport.

With the smell of extortionist pricing in their nostrils, eight members of the U.S. House of Representatives from North Carolina voted "citizens be damned." They were:

• Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-1st)


• Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-2nd)


• Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-5th)


• Rep. Howard Coble (R-6th)


• Rep. Robin Hayes (R-8th)


• Rep. Sue Myrick (R-9th)


• Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-10th)


• Rep. Charles Taylor (R-11th)

Remember them. They are they Kill It Eight. They want to kill the central quality that makes the Internet a fountainhead of opportunity and growth.

They like their voters underinformed, stripped of rightful opportunities and impoverished by monopolistic pricing. Congress is deciding the fate of the Internet and the Kill It Eight voted to kill it. They voted to make the best hope small business and regular people have had for decades into a preserve for the big phone companies and deep-pockets multinational corporations. They voted to let AT&T and the like push the rest of us off onto the digital equivalent of a muddy cow path.

The Kill It Eight voted to slip monopoly pricing power to the same companies that secretly gave your phone records (and won't tell you which phone records) to the Bush Administration. As Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig wrote in the Washington Post on June 8:

Most of the great innovators in the history of the Internet started out in their garages with great ideas and little capital. This is no accident. Network neutrality protections minimized control by the network owners, maximized competition and invited outsiders in to innovate. Net neutrality guaranteed a free and competitive market for Internet content. The benefits are extraordinary and undeniable.

With Net Neutrality, the Internet has given us, and will continue to give us, American Capitalism at its best.

The Kill It Eight aren't for that. Their votes said so.

Four North Carolina members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted for Net Neutrality and for a richer, more opportunity-filled future:

• Walter Jones (D-3rd)
• David E. Price (D-4th)
• Melvin Watt (D-12th)
• Brad Miller (D-13th)

Those four want to give the little guy a chance. They want all Americans to have the opportunity to be well-informed from a wonderfully rich and growing variety of information sources. They want small business to have essentially the same access to the Internet that multinational corporations have. They oppose extortionist pricing and monopolistic practices. They like and are fighting for American Capitalism at its best.

Their votes said so.

I for one am going to remember.