Carly Fiorina's Campaign Against a Free and Open Internet

Carly Fiorina, the millionaire former Hewlett-Packard CEO and
telecommunications industry executive, is running for the US Senate as a
candidate who supposedly knows a thing or two about technology.

But California Republican appears to be a lot less interested in
realizing the promise of new technologies than in warping federal
policies regulating those technologies in order to make it easier for
big telecommunications companies to get a whole lot bigger -and a whole
lot wealthier-at the expense of consumers and democracy.

How so?

By subdividing the Internet so that telecommunications companies can "prioritize" certain content. Translation: She wants multinational corporations to be able to buy establish and information superhighway for corporate content while steering the content that might serve the public interest onto a digital dirt road.

Fiorina has repositioned herself as an ardent opponent of Net Neutrality,
the principle that says all Internet content must be treated
equally-and that assures Americans can easily access every site on the
World Wide Web, not just those set up by big corporations.

The candidate, who bought her party's Senate nomination with heavy
spending from her own bank account, wants to go to Washington to protect
the interests of people like her. To do that, she says she will work to
prevent the Federal Communications Commission from using its authority
to preserve a free and open Internet.

"The FCC is not an appropriate regulatory body for all of the advances going on for the Internet," says Fiorina.

The senator Fiorina is challenging, Barbara Boxer, is a supporter of Net Neutrality.

The senator's re-election campaign
proudly declares that: "Senator Boxer supports Net Neutrality
legislation to ensure that Internet Service Providers cannot
discriminate against web sites or give preferential access to some web
sites over others."

That's not just election-season rhetoric.

Boxer has long been a leader in the fight for the expansion of
broadband services. For instance, she is a co-sponsor of legislation
that seeks to preserve Net Neutrality. That legislation would amend the
communications act of 1934 to ensure to that the Internet is not divided
into tiers that are serve commercial and entertainment interests while
undermining consumers and democracy. To that end, it asserts that:

1.) Broadband service providers shall not interfere with the ability
of any person to use a broadband service to access or offer any lawful
content via the Internet;

2.) Only prioritize content or services based on the type of content
or services and the level of service purchased by the user, without
charge for such prioritization.

Boxer's on the side of citizens and consumers.

Fiorina's on the side of the corporations that she used to work
for-or, to be precise, that she continues to work for in the new
capacity of US Senate candidate. That's unsettling. What's even more
unsettling is the notion of what she might do as US Senator Carly
Fiorina, R-Telecommunications Corporations.