Washblog

Verizon is a company that is run by Republicans, gives huge quantities of money to Republicans, and whose interests are better served by <strike>the corporate whoremongers groveling at their feet</strike> Republicans.  Do you honestly think Verizon would hesitate to close the pipes on JibJab in 2008 if given the chance?  Comcast has already proven to be less than trustworthy.  Given the chance to hit Daily Kos with enormous fees, do you think they'd hesitate?  

We're not talking about telcos blocking what information you or I can access from the internet - we're talking about telcos having the ability to block information from leaving Daily Kos' servers in the first place.  In other words, in the guise of "non-discrimination" and the "free market", the telcos are spending millions to convince Congressmen that the telcos themselves can determine what "freedom" appears in the "market".  If they're able to do it to Kos, who makes quite a bit of money to deal with overhead, small but relatively influential blogs like ours or HorsesAss don't stand a chance of staying in the pipes.  

Some great tidbits on how this campaign against freedom from censorship works come from Matt Stoller's coverage on 6/29:

Stevens, at one point in his rant, aimed some serious blows at the Internet companies. He said he felt that the 5 big Internet companies (all of whom wanted a "free ride" on the Internet) had cooked up this network neutrality amendment and were pushing it through the Congress. He said that in his opinion, more money had been spent by these 5 companies on this amendment than on any other amendment in history.

The irony of the moment was almost too much to bear. In the audience at the mark-up were around 200 people. I counted 8 from Internet companies. The total of telephone company lobbyists was more like 50 or 75. And of course, they are spending $15 million a week on advertising to push the bill and kill network neutrality. The Internet companies have bought almost no advertising, and they are outgunned by a factor of 10 to 1 in lobbying clout.

When Stevens was done, Dorgan just took him to the woodshed. Dorgan said, "You're such a passionate speaker, when you're finished, I'm not always sure whether you're carrying a strong hand or a weak hand. You've argued both sides of this case quite well." Everyone laughed. Dorgan then broke out the Hands off the Internet television commercial which claimed that telco-sponsored legislation prevented discrimination on the internet. Dorgan said, "Can you explain why it is that your supporters are lying on television? They say that nondiscrimination is in your bill. Can you show me where it's in your bill?" Dorgan hammered the point until Stevens wouldn't respond.

Full disclosure:  I am involved, loosely, in all this nonsense, in that my employer (whose opinions I don't represent here) is on the side fighting for Net neutrality and, hence, outgunned 10 to 1 in lobbying clout.  I want you to think about how much influence the telcos are buying right now with their $15 million a week in advertising.  It's simply unbelievable and mind-boggling.

In this diary, m3047 captures the classic misunderstanding of the issue:

I've been in the IT racket for a long time. The advocates for net neutrality were entirely unpersuasive in their public arguments, and I was left with the more rationalized than reasonable conclusion that this was about people who didn't want to pay for their Torrents bandwidth, or maybe pay extra for low latency+high bandwidth for their VoIP (which they haven't paid any number of telecomm taxes on): the "end to end cargo cult".

... so here's what I'm thinking:

I had no idea we were at the tipping point of returning to the point where you had to buy your "phone" from the "telcos".

I'm hopeful that m will share with us the full response he got from Cantwell's office on the issue (perhaps in the comments here?), so we can all understand more fully what the hell's going on.  

It ain't simple.  No doubt, this is at its core about the telcos versus...well, everyone else except their Republican toadies and possibly Joementum.  But the technical speak is difficult to negotiate.  We believe telcos are trying to control the flow of information on the internet, they claim that we're all just freeloaders hitching onto their bandwidth.  It's tough when both sides are crying foul based on issues of discrimination (and dontcha just love the poor ol' telcos crying about discrimination against them.  Sound similar to any major religions that control all debate, most government offices and national holidays, yet cry about the war being waged against them and constant discrimination against poor little ol' them?).  

We need some clarity here!  In one of the best pieces I've seen on the issue, Tim Berners Lee has this to say (and I highly recommend his piece):

Net neutrality is this:

If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.

That's all.  It's up to the ISPs to make sure they interoperate so that that happens.  Net Neutrality is NOT asking for the internet for free.

Net Neutrality is NOT saying that one shouldn't pay more money for high quality of service.  We always have, and we always will.

TBL is dead on, and his piece is required reading.  

There are things we can do, right now, to make a bit of noise.  Drop by and sign the petition at Save the Internet.  Visit It's Our Net.  Send a letter, fax, email or call Patty Murray to encourage her to be on the right side.  Hell, send a note to Maria Cantwell to thank her for taking up the banner on the issue.

And because I always say we need to mix some humor in so we don't take ourselves too seriously, check out Ted Stevens' "series of tubes" interpretation of the internets as a Techno Remix.  Bwahahahahaha!  I hope someone gets this and starts playing it at all of Mike!'s campaign events.  Let's find out if Mike! shares Ted's assessment of the internets (we already know he's opposed to Net neutrality).