Save the Internet
Published by deviousdiva June 28th, 2006 in Blogging.Yesterday I wrote a post about the “rest of us” in the blogworld. Those of us who are never heard in mainstream media and are in danger of also being lost in the “new media” that is blogging. Vegankid has an important post up about Net Neutrality and the threat against it.
Net Neutrality is basically the First Amendment of the Internet. It states that every site is given equal access. Basically, you are able to search for and look at a small site just as easily as a big corporate one. That's what the internet is all about, right? Not if the big telecommunications companies and their enormous team of lobbying attorneys has anything to do with it. AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and Comcast are spending millions of dollars to create a tiered internet where money determines how fast your site load or if it loads at all. The bill to destroy Net Neutrality is being considered by the Senate right now.
You can think of the internet as one big public access channel, but these telecommunications companies are hoping to turn it into something more like cable tv. Instead of being able to choose from millions of websites, you'll have to choose from your internet provider's menu. And those that don't pay to be on the menu, won't be accessible
For more information on what this means for all of us and details on what you can do about it, follow this link to Save the Internet
UPDATE: WE ARE LOSING, PEOPLE…
The Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday rejected a network-neutrality amendment, handing cable and phone broadband-access providers yet another victory over a coalition that has demanded the application of strict nondiscrimination standards against entities that control access to millions of Internet users.
Via Feministing
Technorati Tags: blogging, net neutrality
I really don’t see how the U.S. government can legislate the internet. How can this apply to sites overseas unless the EU adopts the same laws? (and they won’t)Something like this will crash and burn U.S. internet. They’ll find a way to build "walls" between the U.S. and the rest of the world, just like the wall they want to build between the U.S. and Mexico.Things are out of control in the U.S. right now.
Most of the current arguments for and against Net Neutrality are technologically naive; Bob Cringely has written about this in his online PBS column three weeks running:”Now to Net Neutrality — what does it really mean and why do some telecommunication providers seem so opposed to it? The answers are neither as clear — nor as evil — as partisans on both sides of the aisle in Congress are suggesting. Those opposing Net Neutrality have in mind VoIP, and nothing but VoIP. Those in favor of Net Neutrality seem to think it means equal treatment under the Internet, which it doesn’t really. The only thing we can be sure of, in fact, is that Congress doesn’t get it and has a fair chance of making it worse.”The full articles are worth reading:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu.....60615.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu.....60622.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pu.....60629.html