Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Net Neutrality

The Nation explains why the Net Neutrality issue is so important.

Once an American logs on, he or she has known that it is as easy to get to Wal-Mart Watch's dissident www.walmartwatch.com site as it is to reach the retail giant's corporate site. It is as easy to go to visit George Bush's official White House location on the Web as it is to visit the folks at www.afterdowningstreet.org, who would like very much to remove the president and everyone he rode in with.

In 2005, however, the Federal Communications Commission, began to attack the Net Neutrality rules that for decades have guaranteed a level playing field for every web site. They did so under pressure from "old-media" telecommunications corporations -- mostly in the cable and phone sectors -- that want to "own" the web. If Net Neutrality, the first amendment of the Internet, is completely eliminated in the manner favored by the telecommunications giants, then cable and phone companies can make a fortune by providing high-speed connections to sites that pay for the the service while discriminating against sites that do not pay.

2 comments:

Greyhair said...

Lynne, this is one of those issues that doesn't get enough attention. It's a real danger to the accountability movement of our media and our government and it scares the beejesus out of me.

Lynne said...

Me too.
The internet is the "backyard fence" for the world. Without it, I wouldn't know about most of the issues so vitally important to us all. I wouldn't see any photos of the war dead coming home. I wouldn't know who to contact about legislation or call about the animal abuse cases that matter to me. I wouldn't know a thing about Chinese people who are literally worked to death so I can have cheap plastic crap that I don't need anyway.
Our democracy, everything our ancestors fought and died for, is slipping away while Americans are mesmerized by the garbage on tv.
No wonder I battle depression.