hello yall, please join the battle for this (tho I got trashed a few days ago by 2 responses of kostars who were angry about my typing style--yes, more concerned about my typing/posting style than net freedoms which will render everything at daily Kos & similar, free dissent/info quite meaningless if indeed net neutrality looses out to AT&T & political pals of theirs as we get 404 messages & the slow lane if and when their version of the web gets put in place.)
Thus: "Just in time for the upcoming House vote on Net Neutrality, the Washington Post has printed a no-nonsense op-ed by SavetheInternet.com charter members Lawrence Lessig and Robert McChesney.
The message of "No Tolls on the Internet" is clear: Congress can not ignore the public outcry and vote to hand control of the Internet to the cable and telephone cartel.
http://www.savetheinternet.com/...
Reported today, June 8 by Timothy Karr of FreePress.net:
"Here's what Lessig of Stanford Law School and McChesney of Free Press had to say:
"The protections that guaranteed network neutrality have been law since the birth of the Internet -- right up until last year, when the Federal Communications Commission eliminated the rules that kept cable and phone companies from discriminating against content providers. This triggered a wave of announcements from phone company chief executives that they plan to do exactly that.
Now Congress faces a legislative decision. Will we reinstate net neutrality and keep the Internet free? Or will we let it die at the hands of network owners itching to become content gatekeepers? The implications of permanently losing network neutrality could not be more serious. The current legislation, backed by companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, would allow the firms to create different tiers of online service. They would be able to sell access to the express lane to deep-pocketed corporations and relegate everyone else to the digital equivalent of a winding dirt road. Worse still, these gatekeepers would determine who gets premium treatment and who doesn't.
Their idea is to stand between the content provider and the consumer, demanding a toll to guarantee quality delivery. It's what Timothy Wu, an Internet policy expert at Columbia University, calls "the Tony Soprano business model": By extorting protection money from every Web site -- from the smallest blogger to Google -- network owners would earn huge profits. Meanwhile, they could slow or even block the Web sites and services of their competitors or those who refuse to pay up.
They'd like Congress to "trust them" to behave."
......well folks,
there's more hard smart stuff at that link, please read & act
while the net is still the net we all dearly use as a tool of free speech.
Note that Lessig is also the guy who battled in the Supreme court to stop Disney from extending it's corporate statute of limitations on using the Mickey Mouse logo for more decades (ironically Disney stole it's first hit, Steamboat Willie, from another guy, says it all, ey?).
Lessig & the Electronic Frontier Foundation & similar FREE internet gurus can't do this alone...
Please make some noise while it's now getting to be the
2 minute warning on this issue, thanx:
From Free Press: [ http://www.freepress.net/ ]
"Call your representative:
Ask your House representative to support legislation that would protect Net Neutrality -- the principle that keeps the Internet free and open.
http://www.freepress.net/...
Go to the this Web site to find your representative's phone number and ask your representative to support Internet freedom by voting for a Net Neutrality amendment to the larger communications bill called the COPE Act.
The COPE Act is riddled with problems, the biggest of which is the lack of genuine Net Neutrality protections. Tell your representative to oppose any telecommunications law that doesn't contain meaningful and enforceable Net Neutrality."
Thanx folks & please,
if you're gonna chide me again for not being "cool" enough or the "right" type of Kos poster, remember that WE at kos are supposed to be the outsiders...
I sure hope we're not becoming a groupthink tanker.