As democracy movements worldwide struggle to speak out via the Internet, many here in the U.S. may have overlooked an effort in Congress to undermine this basic freedom.
It takes the form of an arcane "resolution of disapproval" now wending its way through the Senate. If it passes, the resolution would void a recent Federal Communications Commission rule that seeks to preserve long-held Internet standards that protect users against blocking and censorship.
The resolution would remove these protections. It was put forth by industry-funded members of Congress who don't mind letting the few corporations who sell Internet access in America decide what we get to see, hear and read on the Internet.
These senators are also hoping the resolution will appease the most paranoid among the Tea Party faithful, who equate any consumer safeguard put in place during the Obama era with myriad and shadowy government plots.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who pushed a similar measure through the House earlier this year, stoked these fears when she said, "the FCC is in essence building an Internet Iron Curtain that will restrict more of our freedom."
Blackburn's rhetoric puts her and other supporters of the resolution far outside of the mainstream of Americans, who believe that neither the government nor corporations should be able to censor lawful content online.
If Congress succeeds in passing this measure, it will go well beyond deciding whether the FCC's recent rules are appropriate. The resolution will prohibit the agency from engaging in any effort to protect Internet freedom. The move opens the path for corporations eager to take a wrecking ball to the open architecture that has made the Internet a great equalizer for all users.
Lobbyists and lawyers working for the likes of AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have argued that these companies need to take control of your clicks in order to more efficiently--and profitably--manage the abundance of user-driven innovations online. They promise to be good stewards of this unruly medium if only regulators would take away the one network protection that ensures everyone's right to connect with everyone else on the Internet.
That's not what the Internet's founders intended. They built the network to be free of gatekeepers, giving each user equal access to all the legal content and applications online.
These engineers couldn't have envisioned that this open design would, in a relatively short time, evolve to make the network a potent political tool for freedom movements and democratic organizing worldwide.
But it has. Think of the explosion of Internet organizing and political expression that has swept the world in 2011, from Tunisia to Tehran to Beijing, and is now being embraced in America by protesters determined to Occupy Wall Street.
Americans cherish freedom of speech as much as people across North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. An open Internet allows all sides of contentious issues to be heard by anyone who chooses to listen. It opens up a global pipeline for protest movements, a window for millions to witness injustices and a platform upon which to organize for a better future.
So ask yourself this. Do you want Congress to surrender your right to choose online to a company whose sole motive is to generate as much profit as possible? Do you want to wipe away the only protection that prevents any entity--be it corporate or government--from blocking our right to connect with one another?
The hardliners in Congress who support this resolution have joined in a pact with powerful Internet providers and free-market extremists to kill off your most fundamental online right.
It's now up to us users to use the open Internet to reclaim it.
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Unfortunately, they did not forsee all the illegal content, spam, viruses, bots, DDOS attacks, and other hazards that developed on the network. Nor did they forsee the development of VOIP, or real time video streaming, or the need to be able to shape and prioritize the traffic moving across the network in real time to keep the quality of service high.
All internet traffic is NOT the same. I'm pretty sure most folks would agree that the your 911 phone call needs a higher network priority than the kid down the block downloading music from some P2P site - so the question then becomes who should be the one setting that network traffic priority? The ISP that owns that network, or the FCC?
The local conspiracy theories suggest that the ISPs are going to get together and suppress your freedom of speech, or prevent you from visiting HuffPo or something. AS IF someone over at Verizon, or Comcast, or AT&T actually gives a rats rear end what you are reading, or what news you get. I got news for you folks - if anyone out there is going to throw the off switch on the internet to prevent your access sometime in the future, it will be the FCC, using the power they claim to have over the internet today.
The idea that the FCC become more involved is far more consistent with those who seek to control others - the John F. Kerry's, the Nancy Pelosi's, the Barney Frank's. After all they know best for you and me!
If there's corporations involved, some democrat, somewhere is going to be benefited by playing the game.
The last thing we want as conservatives is government taking even more freedom away.
Corporate influence over Congress is out of control. Any congressman/woman introducing these kinds of bills should be tossed out on their asses.
"Only government knows best for you and me"
next to the TPs'
"Question Authority - Trust People"
-you ought to be asking yourself who are the real facists?
South Korea and Hong Kong may be #1 / #2, but I think I'm doing just fine on my 50Mb connection.
Besides that, the internet needs to be like the corporate controlled media filtering and propaganda/advertising delivery system we call television.
(Sarcasm)
I know things drift back and forth especially with technology in terms of the possible uses and abuses. I applaud those rouge engineers and programmers working in the worlds of open source. It would be a great day when those engineers return control and choice with regard to my gadgets back to me.
I saw that we were providing dissidents in the middle east with the capability of setting up a computer internet using miniature personal transmission units. I thought, maybe we all need that technology since corporations can't help themselves in terms of enabling abuse.
The internet...Not really being a thing? That's how you're refuting Lillee's argument?
Let me help you out:
Internet: A worldwide Telecommunications network of business, government, and personal computers.
That's a definition of the Internet taken from a free dictionary found on...THE INTERNET!
So since we've established that the Internet has both a technical, accepted definition, and since I'm sure we can agree that nearly every living, breathing American knows exactly what you're talking about when you say "Internet," we can conclude with absolute certainty that the Internet is, indeed, "a thing."
Clearly, you're either a "paid contributor," or you're financially enmeshed with the telecommunications industry in some way, or both.
Owning the pipes no more confers, or should confer, control or ownership of content and etcetera anymore than you have the right to control or own what I say or do when I'm within your physical house.
Even though you pay for it, maybe even paid to have it built - your house is in America (presumably). As is a lot of that infrastructure the telecoms own that you think they are entitled to control to "any degree they desire".
Well, guess what? They can't. The law will see to that.
And if the law doesn't, the people will.
The end result would be the internet looking much like the MSM - propaganda drivel for the masses.
It sure would be great if the government did make a law protecting the 'freedom of the packets', but they haven't yet. I sure as hell think they should (I've known they needed to since years before you ever heard of the Internet) but that, too, doesn't change the fact that your idea that they DON'T have the right to control every bit of every packet that their equipment handles is fanciful. Widespread, but counter-factual.
To review, I appreciate your wanting this kind of thing to be unthinkable, but it is simply the facts. Yes, they have the right to control their equipment, and everything it does. There is no legal justification (yet) for saying otherwise.
Freedom of communication and freedom from censorship are pure honest issues. The Internet is exciting and remarkable, like a lawless frontier without boundaries where everything goes. You can access or post any information originating from any part of the world: words, video and sounds no matter how dark or radical, and say anything anonymously, with no repercussions. Communicate with anyone, none forbidden. Limitless available knowledge from the most secure Top Secret echelons, and Intelligence officials are powerless to stop it. The Internet is a wonderful realm as is, which government won't change. It's a virtual world; they can't just reach in and restrain people and make them quit. Tech experts won't permit it, and the rest of us will continue effortlessly touching the keys as we will, ignoring restrictive laws.