eBay urges members to support net neutrality

eBay has emailed its six million US members to seek their support in the debate over net neutrality.

This is the second time members have received an email from eBay chief executive officer Meg Whitman, following a previous appeal in May.

On the Net Neutrality page of its US website, the auction giant says: “Consumers, non-profits and businesses already pay for access to the internet. Broadband providers should not be permitted to ‘double dip’ by charging consumers twice.”

A post on eBay’s Chatter blog claims that Whitman’s first email prompted more than 300,000 letters from eBay members to US politicians.

The move follows previous calls by eBay for its members to lobby US legislators on matters such as taxation and "negative government interference".

The concept of net neutrality, which broadly means that all internet sites must be treated equally, has drawn a list of high-profile backers, from pop star Moby to Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the worldwide web.

Berners-Lee recently wrote a blog post about his concerns. Without net neutrality, he argued, legislation-free use of the internet by millions could come to an end.

"Hundreds of millions of people are using [the web] freely,” he wrote. “I am worried that this is going end in the USA.”