What I want you to know. Which is everything.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

The Death of the Internet

Watch this video. I think this is a really important issue for anyone who values the first ammendment.

COAnews


Major telecommunications companies are spending millions lobbying the U.S. congress to make the Internet into a private network. In political lingo this mean abandoning what is called "Net Neutrality". In common sense terms it's about the government withdrawing our right to Internet Freedom. This V-Doc. (viral documentary) is about the current threat to Internet Freedom and how we can hold on to the open Internet and our right to communicate.

The only way the telecommunications companies will be successful is if we fail to raise awareness about this situation. If people find out about the fact that we are about to lose our Internet freedom there is no way they will allow congress to do this.

This congressional decision will set a monumental precedent, and thus, impact not just U.S. citizens, but citizens all over world.
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And then this:



I don't quite understand what all of this implies except that it will give individuals less of a voice. The wonderful disagreements, decention, dialogue and arguments that help edify us all will essential cease or at the very least slow to a crawl. Basically the individuality and freedom that we have to use the internet and share information will be lost if we continue to let big businesses throw their weight around. Sign petitions, call Representatives, find out more about it. I think this issue is huge and I'm kind of sad that I've only heard about this over the last couple of weeks.

1 comment:

Jason said...

I don't know how immenent and dire this situation really is. Arin from Four Eyed Monsters film/vodcast/website had an episode where he broke down and essentially began looking like Chicken Little. Rocketboom just had an episode on Friday about this issue. It seems that a lot of people in the blogosphere and vlogosphere see this as a real threat, but it really has the appearance of acting like the sky is falling.

Sure. This is a threat. It always has been. But if this were to really happen, I think it would have happened 10-15 years ago, when the internet was not quite as prevalent as it is today. By now, the internet is too big and too international to try to reign in. Even if it can be done, however, I doubt that the "powers that be" would allow it to happen. Arin made it sound like this issue was coming to a head in the next month or so. I don't think it's that imminent. There's still time to get the word out and inform the decision-makers about the issue.

In other words, I'm not ready to claim that the sky is falling just yet.