American Samizdat
New piece up @ The Raw Story. Not quite as as leading edge as it was when I submitted it last week, now that Digby and Atrios and Josh are all piping up, but such is life.
The fact that my thunder is largely dissipated due to delays beyond my control is not important. The fact that I now sound like a Johnny-come-lately is not important. No, my pique is irrelevant.
Seriously, folks. Make some noise and stop these thieving bastards.
The fact that my thunder is largely dissipated due to delays beyond my control is not important. The fact that I now sound like a Johnny-come-lately is not important. No, my pique is irrelevant.
Seriously, folks. Make some noise and stop these thieving bastards.
posted by bluememe at 4/25/2006
1 Comments:
Mr. Steinberg: Did you read Mike McCurry's rant about the internet on Huffington? 5-02-08 Here it is:
Mike McCurry
Bio
05.01.2006
Hostile Commentary and Net Neutrality (31 comments )
READ MORE: Washington Post, Iraq
Reading lots of comments on my last post, I guess my point got made: the culture and discourse of the Internet is not what you would teach kids at the dinner table -- unless you kept a bar of soap handy.
On net neutrality, I feel like screaming "puh-leeeze." The First Amendment of the Internet is under assault!
Oh yeah, how many of you lifted a finger to protect the First Amendment when the Washington Post and other "MSM" cited it to ferret out the truth about WMD and the wars inside the U.S. intelligence community over the pre-Iraq war (and now pre-Iran war)? (And don't lecture me about how they failed to do their job -- I have had Pultizer Prize winning reporters tell me that they feel intimindated and they lack public support. Of course they -- and their editors-- feel that way. Most of the blogosphere spends hours making them feel that way).
The Internet is not a free public good. It is a bunch of wires and switches and connections and pipes and it is creaky. You all worship at Vince Cerf who has a clear financial interest in the outcome of this debate but you immediately castigate all of us who disagree and impune our motives. I get paid a reasonable but small sum to argue what I believe. How many of the net neuts out there are honest about the financial resources and special interests behind your side of the argument? Do you really believe this is good v. evil or just an honest disagreement about what will make the 'net flourish and prosper? What do you make of David Farber's recent caution about the unintended consequences of regulating the Internet?
I am against giving the FCC and other government regulators the power to decide how the Internet will build out in the future. That is what you net neuts are for. The Internet has worked absent regulation and now you want to introduce it for a solution to what? What content is being denied? What service is being degraded? What is not right with the Internet that you are trying to cure?
Instead, you have some myth about dangers ahead if someone actually asks (horrors!) that we pay for the billions it will take to make the Internet to work in the decades ahead? Do you want to pay or do you want to make the giant content companies that will be streaming video and data rich services to pay? I'd rather have a robust Internet that can handle the volume of traffic that we will put on it in the near future rather than an public Internet where we all wait in line for the next porno-spammer to let his content go before we get to have arguments like this.
This is not an issue where there is a progressive, pro-little guy, pro-Dem stand versus the big bad companies that pay big bad lobbyists (what a joke you think I am one of them). This is a clear disagreement on principle about what will get us the next generation of the internet that will work for all of us.
Any one want to have a rational conversation about that or do you want to rant and rave and provide a lot of May Day rhetoric that is not based in any fact?
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