Al Franken Quotes

At its core, the FCC's plan to regulate the Internet will force businesses and people to check first with the government and get permission to innovate.

We need to make Net Neutrality the law. We need to elect a Congress that will make it a priority to keep this important principal intact - and insure equal and open access to the Internet for all.

We are now in a situation in which we will have to rely on market forces to maintain a free and open Internet. And nobody really knows whether that will work or not. One thing we do know is we didn't need to do this to ourselves. This was a solution in search of a problem.

I think net neutrality needs to be explored in a broader sense.

The important thing to remember with the Internet is that there are large companies that have an interest in controlling how information flows in it. They're very effective at lobbying Congress, and that pattern has locked down other communication media in the past. And it will happen again unless we do something about it.

Net neutrality isn't a government takeover of the Internet, as many of my Republican colleagues have alleged.

A free and open Internet should not have to be weighed down by legal challenges - its dynamism is essential to our economy.

Reclassification is the best way to for us to preserve the Internet as an unfettered tool for communication and the sharing of ideas.

Without net neutrality protections, the Internet would no longer be a free and open ecosystem for innovation.

To go back to a 1950s voice mentality with Title II and net neutrality would be a tremendous mistake for our country.

The FCC sided with the public and adopted extremely strong net neutrality rules that should be a global model for Internet freedom.

The Internet freedom issue we need to focus on is network neutrality.

I support a free and open Internet.

The most important thing to remember here is that the Internet is not broken, and all of the innovation that we've seen since inception has been based on it being free and open.

The Internet belongs to all of us, not big telecom.

Net Neutrality is Internet freedom.

The Internet is working because it's free and open, and there's no discrimination. Without these rules, ISPs could treat content differently based on commercial interests or even ideology.

Beginning in the Clinton administration, there was, for nearly two decades, a broad bipartisan consensus that the best Internet policy was light-touch regulation - rules that promoted competition and kept the Internet 'unfettered by federal or state regulation.' Under this policy, a free and open Internet flourished.

Net Neutrality is what makes the Internet so great - and so vital for innovation and creativity.

I think we should not control the Internet.

The question is not whether we want to keep this open, neutral Internet - we do, or should - but whether government rulemaking can give us the result we want.

I have been a strong supporter of a free and open Internet and have indicated this both prior to and subsequent to being sworn in as chairman of the F.C.C. I believe it is important to take concrete and reasonable steps to protect the freedom of users and entrepreneurs and businesses both small and large on the Internet.

Google's entire business model and its planning for the future are banking on an open and free Internet. And it will not succeed if the Internet becomes overly balkanized.

Allowing a handful of broadband carriers to determine what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the features that have made the Internet such a success, and could permanently compromise the Internet as a platform for the free exchange of information, commerce, and ideas.

There was one issue on which there seemed to be almost unanimity: the Internet should not be managed by any government, national or multinational.