Net Neutrality - Infringing On Your Freedom

When enough people have lost enough of their rights, to the point of frustration and anger, there will be a revolt against the right-wing-nuts who want to control everything about your life. Following is an the best description I've seen of the issue of "net neutrality" legislation working its way through Congress.

From Joel Bleifuss at In These Times - click here to read more...

By not including network neutrality protections, the COPE Act upholds a 2005 ruling from the Federal Communications Commission that allows Internet service providers—telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon and cable companies like Comcast—to charge Web content creators a fee to make their sites readily accessible.

For example, take a filmmaker who wants to produce a documentary and distribute it to the public on his Web site. Under this new legislation, a service provider like AT&T would be able to charge the filmmaker for making his content available to their customers. Or, if AT&T did not approve of the documentary, it could refuse to let its customers access it all together—thereby allowing corporate censorship of a medium now characterized by the freewheeling exchange of ideas. In effect, the legislation allows the telecom industry to become the tollbooth operator on the information superhighway. The Internet will begin to look like cable TV, where viewers can only choose from available options.