Over the weekend, Sen. Al Franken (D.-Minn.) made the corporate takeover of our media, and the government's acquiescence to these corporations, frighteningly clear.
Franken told more than 2,000 bloggers and organizers attending the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas that our media system is at risk everywhere we turn -- from our free speech online to the growing power of companies who own a massive number of media outlets.
"Tonight I want to tell you that I believe Net Neutrality is the First Amendment issue of our time," Franken said during a closing keynote address to conference-goers. He went on to warn of the looming merger between cable giant Comcast and NBC-Universal, saying:
If no one stops them, how long do you think it will take before 4 or 5 mega-corporations effectively control the flow of information in America not only on television but online? If we don't protect Net Neutrality now ... how long do you think it will take before [they] start favoring its content over everyone else's?
With the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision giving unprecedented rights to corporations over individuals, Franken said these merged, powerful media conglomerates will have untold influence over our democracy:
And if Citizens United is allowed to stand, how long do you think it will take for these monoliths to buy enough elections so that they effectively have veto power over anything Congress tries to do to regulate them?
Franken pointed to a grim, but realistic picture of the future, where media companies decide what we watch and read on every media platform, and control the information we're able to create and disseminate.
| Franken: "Help me fight this!" |
This value comes from the fact that Net Neutrality has created an equal playing field on the Internet, where anyone can connect, create and innovate. Without Net Neutrality, Franken said, "It would become just a 'series of tubes' through which money could flow into the pockets of private corporations."
And if the Comcast-NBC merger is approved, it will be the first "domino" in a series of other moves that will wrestle further control of the media from the people's hands. "If it falls, the rest will soon follow. It's almost too late to stop this from happening but not quite," he said.
The government now has a role to play. Congress can mitigate the influence of corporate money on our elections. The FCC can enact rules that would protect Net Neutrality and free speech online. And the FCC and Congress can block the NBC-Comcast merger, or in the very least, put strict conditions on the company to protect local and diverse journalism and information.
But Franken also said that the real action needs to come from the public.
"I can tell you first hand that the government, the White House and the FCC have been hearing plenty from corporations on the other side of these issues and not nearly enough from you," Franken said in closing. "If you want to protect the free flow of information in this country and all that depends on it, you have to help me fight this!"
Follow Timothy Karr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TimKarr
What we really need to do is break up the big monopolies of the media. One corporation should not be allowed to own so much media that they can influence what is broadcast.
Kay, here's how it works - if the ISPs have their way, they can essentially pick and choose which websites you visit get "priority" over others. So, Comcast would get NBC.com priority over, say, a site that features independent programming like blip.tv. THAT is why this is important - NBC.com will take seconds to load, while you could spend an hour waiting for a ten minute clip from blip.tv.
And no, we can't just "choose another ISP" if we don't like it. Even here in freakin' Minneapolis, we are stuck with Comcast because our other choice, Qwest, is so slow it shouldn't even qualify as broadband. The wiring in the city is old, so only Quest's very slowest DSL speeds are available. Even then, choosing between DSL and cable is like choosing between apples and oranges. There are NO other cable providers in this area, and most people will find the same thing has happened in their areas, too, because I guess people have forgotten that a "monopoly" is more than a board game...
This is serious stuff, and I am SO HAPPY that Al is working hard on behalf of the people of Minnesota to bring attention to it! :D I am so proud to have voted for him and proud that my boyfriend interned for his campaign!
The future is now.
Franken is spot on, but he's naive if he thinks hearing from all of us is going to have any effect. We don't have the money to influence congress and after citizen's united, we don't have the votes either because we don't have the money to buy the votes. He who controls the media controls the votes. Corporations won't even have to donate directly to campaigns any more. They can control the votes directly.
we may elect presidents to lead,but senators and congressmen are elected to REPRESENT their constituents....Al for pres!!!!
Right?
(...crickets)
If the corporatocracy dares to take our Internet freedom, it will be the *latest* straw - that's all.
People will succumb, they will become complacent and eventually accepting.
That's why we need to stop the corporatocracy BEFORE it succeeds. We need to enact net neutrality and regs to rollback ownership caps. And we need to do it now. Once they achieve their goals, if they are allowed to, it will be too late.
Similar historical phenomena:
1) European and Asian fiefdoms controlling areas through use of the peasant class for labor and military service.
2) The Roman Catholic Church in controlling access to Heaven through papal decree controlled wealth and the declaration of war throughout Europe for 1260 years.
Typically constituted periods of Dark Ages where alternate modes of thought were actively suppressed by those in power.
Witness the Inquisition of heretics that killed an estimated 100 million people in Europe, based on political correctness.
Additionally, ownership over the physical infrastructure has not translated into the ability to restrict content. Every single attempt to disrupt net neutrality has been successfully rebuffed by individuals on a time frame and in a manner which would be impossible for the FCC to replicate. We will be ceding power we have effectively wielded to a group which cannot respond as nimbly. You are reduced to using the fear of what corporations may do in an attempt to distract people from the realities of the net neutrality debate.
You may be paid to write these things, but anyone who has spent any time getting to understand net neutrality isn't buying your argument.
What we do not need is the government's heavy hand regulating the Net. One of the Commissioners at the FCC -- Michael Copps, the most senior Commissioner and a recent interim Chairman -- has already stated that he wants to regulate content on the Net. And he's the same Commissioner who went ballistic over Janet Jackson's exposure of a pastie (not even a nipple!) during a Super Bowl halftime show some years ago. Want government censorship of the Net? If it happens, it'll start with granting the FCC the power to impose so-called "network neutrality" regulations.
As for network neutrality regulation, it has worked pretty well for telephony: your telephone company doesn't get to decide whose calls they'll let through and what the caller gets to say, and neither does the government. It used to work pretty well for the Internet, too. It wasn't until the Dubya-era FCC relinquished the power to mandate network neutrality (by quietly reclassifying the Internet from a telecommunications service to a data service) that ISPs began interfering with traffic they didn't like.
Regardless of one's stand on government censorship of public broadcasts, it has nothing to do with telecoms regs or network neutrality. It's a straw man, intended to inculcate fear, uncertainty, and doubt among the ill-informed. ISP control over what information you can access on-line is a much more real and imminent threat and is precisely what network neutrality regs are intended to prevent.
Besides showing that he doesn't understand the Constitution he has sworn to uphold, Franken's remarks demonstrate that he is toeing the party line rather than understanding the facts or looking out for his constituents in rural Minnesota, who would be very badly hurt by the proposed regulations. They would kill the small, rural, and independent Internet service providers that serve those areas. If they could get service at all, residents would be left in the loving (not!) hands of monopolies like Qwest. So, why is Franken
embracing these regulations? Because Google, having given millions to the Obama Administration, has gotten its "network neutrality" regulations (which aren't neutral at all; they are intended to favor Google and fortify its
monopolies) onto the Democrats' partisan agenda. And once something is cast as a partisan issue in a highly polarized political environment, there's no talking rationally about it; politicians march in lockstep with their parties. A few members of Congress have been enlightened enough to look at the facts,
but alas, Franken does not seem to be one of them.
I know that you're lying here but others reading this may not. So here's a simple challenge that you have never -- in the three years that you've been stalking me and Free Press online -- been able to prove.
Prove that I am a lobbyist for Google or any of the corporations that have a stake in the Net Neutrality debate.
Go ahead -- this information is freely available via the Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act database. Thanks to the wonders of the open Internet it's available to everyone with a connection.
So prove it. And if you can't, I respectfully ask that you post a full retraction of your many lies over the years. Going forward, whenever you post lies like this on the Web, I'll be able to point people to an URL where you retract your lies and fully admit to your dishonesty.
Thanks -- I am waiting.
The truth is that Mr. Karr's lobbying outfit lobbies 100% for Google's corporate agenda; in fact, it tracks it like a weathervane. It also checks in frequently with other Google lobbyists inside and outside government. See, for example, the improper e-mail correspondence of Google lobbyist Andrew McLaughlin, whom Google arranged to have hired into the position of White House Internet Czar. This has been in the news lately; see http://nlpc.org/stories/2010/07/22/white-house-emails-show-more-extensive-improper-contact-google. The "Ben Scott" with whom McLaughlin was corresponding was another lobbyist from the same outfit as Mr. Karr.
And now that people are finally getting high speed services, the companies want to be able to charge extra if you actually use them. Let's say you want to watch a game on MLB.COM, for example. You already pay for broadband. You paid for a subscription to MLB.COM. If the companies have their way, Comcast, or ATT, or Time-Warner (the ISPs) will be able to add an additional charge, because, well because they can (see above). Net Neutrality simply says, "No. It doesn't matter what kinds of bits are travelling through your wires. It doesn't matter what company, government or individual owns the content. The pipe-owners cannot discriminate, and they cannot charge you extra for stuff they don't own. Get it?