October 19, 2009
The Honorable Julius Genachowski, Chairman
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554
Dear Chairman Genachowski:
We write to express our support for your announcement that the Federal Communications Commission will begin a process to adopt rules that preserve an open Internet. We believe a process that results in common sense baseline rules is critical to ensuring that the Internet remains a key engine of economic growth, innovation, and global competitiveness.
For most of the Internet’s history, FCC rules have ensured that consumers have been able to choose the content and services they want over their Internet connections. Entrepreneurs, technologists, and venture capitalists have previously been able to develop new online products and services with the guarantee of neutral, nondiscriminatory access by users, which has fueled an unprecedented era of economic growth and creativity. Existing businesses have been able to leverage the power of the Internet to develop innovative product lines, reach new consumers, and create new ways of doing business.
An open Internet fuels a competitive and efficient marketplace, where consumers make the ultimate choices about which products succeed and which fail. This allows businesses of all sizes, from the smallest startup to larger corporations, to compete, yielding maximum economic growth and opportunity.
America’s leadership in the technology space has been due, in large part, to the open Internet. We applaud your leadership in initiating a process to develop rules to ensure that the qualities that have made the Internet so successful are protected.
Sincerely,
| Jeff Bezos Founder & CEO Amazon.com |
James F. Geiger Chairman & CEO Cbeyond |
Craig Newmark Founder Craigslist |
Jay Adelson CEO Digg |
| Kevin Rose
Founder |
John Donahoe CEO eBay, Inc. |
Charles E. Ergen
Chairman & CEO |
Erik Blachford Former CEO Expedia |
| Mark Zuckerberg Founder & CEO |
Caterina Fake
Founder |
Eric Schmidt CEO Google, Inc. |
Barry Diller
Chairman & CEO |
| Reid Hoffman Executive Chairman |
Scott Heiferman CEO & Co-Founder Meetup |
John Lilly
CEO |
Howard Janzen CEO One Communications |
| David Ulevitch Founder OpenDNS |
Josh Silverman CEO Skype |
Stan Glasgow President & COO Sony Electronics |
Thomas S. Rogers
President & CEO |
| Evan Williams Co-Founder & CEO |
Gilles BianRosa CEO Vuze, Inc. |
Carl J. Grivner CEO XO Communications |
Steve Chen Founder YouTube |
| Mark Pincus
CEO |