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Saving the Democratic Internet
Opponents of the open Internet like to portray its guiding rule, Net Neutrality, as "a government takeover of the Internet."
They argue that from the day of its inception the Internet has existed free of regulation — a perfect expression of the marketplace at work.
What they don’t understand is that the Internet is a far better expression of democracy, and as such needs rules like Net Neutrality to ensure all users have equal access to online content.
And in reality the Internet as we now know it would never have existed were it not for rules and regulation, beginning with the openness standards created by the Internet’s founders some 40 years ago, codified in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and updated in recent orders by the Federal Communications Commission.
Internet users often take these rules for granted. We expect to access all websites without interference. We can visit our nephew’s blog as easily as we can CNN.com.
But our ability to connect doesn’t happen in a vacuum; Net Neutrality protections are responsible for making these freedoms common to everyone.
This could change, however, if corporate Republicans get their way in the Senate this week. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas is planning a Thursday vote on a "resolution of disapproval" that would void the FCC’s 2010 Open Internet order and strip the agency of any authority to stop corporations from taking control of the Internet from users.
Washington Doublespeak
Sen. Hutchison, who has AT&T’s corporate headquarters in her back yard, has long carried water in Washington for the phone and cable lobby. Her resolution couldn’t come at a worse time for Internet users. These companies are pushing plans to prioritize certain kinds of online and mobile traffic while downgrading the sites, applications and services that the rest of us may want to use.
But when speaking last week about the resolution, Sen. Hutchison got it backwards. The Internet “has created new products, new services, because it is open, because there hasn’t been a gatekeeper," she said, adding that she introduced the Senate resolution because it’s good for Internet users like you and me.
Come again? Sen. Hutchinson seeks to keep the Internet’s gatekeepers at bay by forcing through a measure that would allow companies like AT&T and Comcast to block traffic without consequences.
The hypocrisy is as thick in the House, where resolution proponent Rep. Marsha Blackburn recently said the Open Internet rules are akin to the FCC “building an Internet Iron Curtain that will restrict more of our freedom."
Did you get that? According to Rep. Blackburn supporters of the open Internet are Soviet-styled Communists, hell-bent on walling off the Web and silencing your voice.
Such is the doublespeak that emanates from Washington these days. If senators pass this week’s resolution, their digital ignorance will become a problem for the rest of us, which is why Internet users need to protest the resolution with full force.
The Internet Wrecking Ball
The phone and cable companies behind this scheme have long sought to take a wrecking ball to the Web’s democratic foundation. In their thinking they need to destroy the Internet to rebuild it to better serve their bottom lines. The needs of the rest of us are just an afterthought.
And concerns about blocking are not limited to access to websites, and they are not hypothetical. In 2007 Comcast was caught red-handed blocking people seeking to share files using the popular BitTorrent platform. That same year, Verizon Wireless rejected NARAL Pro-Choice America’s request to send text messages over its network, claiming them to be “unsavory” and “controversial.” While Verizon soon reversed this decision, its attorneys still assert the company’s right to block text messages at will.
Today, mobile carrier MetroPCS is touting a plan that bans all other video services on mobile devices in favor of YouTube. Other carriers are lining up payment schemes that will conceal whole sections of the Internet behind paywalls.
As more people use the Internet for all things media, Internet providers have massive financial incentives to make sites and services pay a premium to reach their users, and to make their users pay extra to experience the entire Internet. And with most Americans having two or fewer options for broadband in their respective markets, there's not enough competition to hold these companies in check.
Congress should not pass a resolution that lets a few wealthy corporations get away with hijacking our online rights. The open Internet is far too important to the rest of us.
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9 Comments so far
Show AllMy DEMOCRATIC Senator, Al Franken, is fighting against this REPUBLICAN crap. I get so sick of the fools who see no difference between Rs and Ds. The myopia of many on the FAR left is so asinine and ultimately evil in its logical concluding catastrophes, that I often wonder about some of these supposed "leftist" posters. Are they blind? Are they provocateurs? Are they republicans? Are they just mentally inhibited? I would guess, yes...yes...yes...and yes.
Some democrats haven't sold out. Mr. Franken may well be one. He hasn't been in office that long, and perhaps he's not seeking to make it a lifetime career. But don't expect most democrats even our President to have your back when it push comes to shove. Mr. Obama will chose a rich republican over a poor democrat any day.
Even the Blue-Team luvin' PCCC (that's the Progressive Change Campaign Committee) said O broke his campaign promises regarding net neutrality ...
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So I guess funny Al is fighting against not just the big bad REPUBLICANS but also BORAT OBLAHBLAH too ... the leader of his own team. Sounds like the deck is stacked against senator Al. I wonder how much fight he has in him? I wonder how much he wants to retain his senate seat?
Speaking to the choir here. I am with you. But then I can't afford broadband so I am small potatos. Even if I could afford broadband I'd still keep my dialup modem. Egypt's protests illustrated that importance to me, and today's EAS broadcast blackout reinforced it. I am sure ATT is working on a way to shut us dialups down as easily as the broadband subscribers, but today landlines still have more protections than broadband users.
http://www.microscope.co.uk/blogs/network_noise/2011/02/egypt-protesters-turn-to-dial-up.html
Tim Karr,
If you are reading this, get this into your thick skull. It's Obama and the Democrats. The Repug makes me sick and the Democrats make me even sicker. I am tired of reading and listening to Obamapoligist continue pointing the fingers at the wrong people. You will not get a single cent from me nor will I support your damn organization anymore! Free Press, what free press? We get free shits without asking for it! “corporate Republicans”? How about corporate Democrats? He (William Daley former President of SBC now AT&T) is in the WH with your Obama!!
Where are the Democrats? The democrats-controlled Senate could easily block it and further Obama could also veto it!!
I replied yesterday to Josh Levy. You can check his email and my real name, care to reply?
Net Neutrality is all that saves a protest site like Common Dreams from being censored off the Internet. Especially in these days of Occupying The One Percent, the powers-that-be desperately want to cool us off in any way they can. They would love to have some way to block us off from places like commondreams.org without seeming to be as heavy-handed as China.
If Net Neutrality dies, I can foresee my ISP saying, "We are certainly not firewalling you! We just want you to pay us $200/month for access to these subversive sites." If they demand that much, who would pay? Very few people, of course. Common Dreams would die, and the one-percenters would say with satisfaction, "Mission accomplished".
It will be more subtle then that. Comcast et al won't block us from such sites is my guess, but they will start to charge the sites huge monthly rates to be available to us. In the end only BIG Corps. will be able to afford these fees. In reality they'll be setting up toll roads for these sites and smaller commercial interests as well. The effect will be to cordon off these sites and snuff them. Of course favored Corp. political sites like say the Tea party will not have to pay such rates, guess why?
> [Comcast and its ilk] will start to charge the sites huge monthly rates to be available to us.
Yes, I can see that happening too. The hammer can fall on the web sites or on individuals, or both.
If net neutrality goes, Comcast will have censorship powers rivalling the Great Firewall of China in size and depth of interference. The 1% will finally control the Internet, cutting off the 99%'s last major independent medium. The net neutrality issue is this important.
While it's hard to imagine the vast majority of 'connected' humanity and gizmo-fetishists of every stripe over-coming their apathy, controlling their addict's need for their daily Internet fix, and having the balls, ovaries or spines to get behind this, it does seem clear that the day may well come (and goddamned soon) when it will be necessary to Occupy The Internet. There might well be a war on-line, or a cyberwar, to match the civil war that is assuredly coming to the Failed Fascist States of America. There are those of us out here who will defend and fight for the Internet, against all odds, and we don't particularly care about how bloody it has to get. And speaking of America, please, anyone writing articles or comments on this American website, do try to curb the tendency to imagine and write entirely from an America-centric perspective. Alien as this notion is to many of you, there is a world out here, and thus far it's showing more straight-up courage and committment to change the mediaevalizing course of our present history than the Failed States of America is. Wikileaks is not American. The Internet is in fact global, though plenty of Yanks won't stop reminding us that it was birthed in the U.S. But the kid left home folks, and as Buddhists like to say, never really belonged to you in the first place. The teenaged Internet is hitchhiking around the planet, living everywhere, and you can bet your exceptionally American arse that there are plenty of hacking interests out here that will charge in, battleaxes brandished, if a bunch of criminal American corporations like Verizon and Comcast attempt to seriously fuck with the Internet. The estimable Mr Franken aside, (and of course I applaud his efforts to table legislation to protect net neutrality), and any arguments,'Greg R', et.al, about how there are discernible or meaningful long-range differences between 'Republicans' and 'Democrats' aside, please regard yourselves as warned and advised that we, all of us, have entered an era in which American 'supremacy' or primacy in all matters Internet, virtual, digital, is being dismantled and permanently erased. We have entered an era in which powerful minds with 100% access - by no means U.S.-based - and all the necessary technology, are coalescing around the cause of the wide open Internet, and are prepared to hack up a global storm and hack with bloody axes through the corporate walls AND firewalls of the Verizons and Comcasts and Vodafones and AT & Ts.
Pandora's Box is wide open, and we'll be fucked if we're going to see it closed, or if we'll be robbed blind to peek into only those parts of it they'll 'allow' us to see.
'Anonymous' is only the beginning. And American politicians, like politicians worldwide, if they know what's good for them, had better get on the right side of THIS history, rein in and muzzle the fascist whores at the Verizons and Comcasts, and goddamn quick, and do whatever is necessary and expedient in their short life-spans in public office to protect the democracy and neutrality of the Internet. Because if they don't, we will. Count on it.