Rather misleading, perhaps (was: Another huge lie)

Posted by Richard Bennett

The Google-backed coalition that’s trying to stifle the growth of America’s communication networks is at it again, lying their asses off spinning like dervishes on speed:

As of this morning, more than 1,500 blogs have taken up the cause, posting links to SavetheInternet.com or urging their readers to take action by calling on members of Congress [...]

Yahoo, Google, and Free Speech

Posted by Richard Bennett

From the illustrious Guardian we learn:

Yahoo appears to have kowtowed to the Chinese government yet again and passed details of a fourth dissident writer’s email account to the security forces, brightening the spotlight thrown on the dubious compromises that western businesses are making to operate within the world’s second largest internet market.
Doing business in China [...]

Democrat fights fascism

Posted by Richard Bennett

Here’s the statement issued by Democrat Charlie Gonzales of San Antonio, TX, on the fascist “net-neutrality” nonsense:

“On its face, the Markey amendments seems fair, but the more you look at the implications of this legislation, the less fair it seems. Its most immediate consequence would be to exempt highly profitable companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and [...]

Google, Microsoft, Amazon lose

Posted by Richard Bennett

The faux grassroots Save the Internet Coalition funded by Google, Microsoft, EBay, Amazon, and Yahoo failed to convince the House Commerce Committee that their hysterical claims about the Impending Death of the Internet were well-founded today, and the Committee voted their Markey Amendment down by a 34-22 vote. True to form, they’re hailing this defeat [...]

Please Do Not Fix The Net

Posted by Richard Bennett

This is a real embarrassment to the high-tech community. A group of semi-monopolies have banded together to pressure Congress to freeze the architecture of the Internet where it is today. They’ve got a blog replete with hysteria and panic (nothing new there) and are running ads. The culprits include Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, eBay, and Amazon.
In [...]

Voices of net sanity

Posted by Richard Bennett

Via Declan McCullough’s Politech mailing list, here are a few sane people opposed to Neutering the Net.
Telepocalypse by Martin Geddes: F2C: Network neutrality speech:

An open, free net is an emergent outcome, not an a-priori input to be legislated into existence. We need to capture and accellerate the experiments in how networks are built, financed and [...]

Free Riders’ Rebellion

Posted by Richard Bennett

It’s rather difficult to find the actual text of the Save the Internet bill that our fuzzy-minded friends are complaining about as it’s not in Thomas yet. Not to worry, the Benton Foundation has posted the original text and the April Update on its web site. This is the section that they’re worried about:
II. [...]

Coalition of the wooly

Posted by Richard Bennett

Check out the membership of the Save the Internet Coalition and ask yourself why it’s all a bunch of pie-eyed world saviors without a single networking guru in the ranks.
Joining this coalition amounts to putting a big sign on your back saying “I’m an idiot.”
Why? Simply put the Internet of the past is not [...]

Neo-malthusian Misanthropy

Posted by Richard Bennett

Speaking of Kunstler, Frank Furedi puts him on context in this essay for Spiked Online:

The Malthusian objective of reducing populations is alive and kicking. For deep ecologists, the issue is straightforward – their starting point, as spelled out by leading ecologists Arne Naess and George Sessions in 1984, is that a ’substantial reduction in human [...]

A crisis of faith

Posted by Richard Bennett

Jim Kunstler is an Urban Planning maven and erstwhile Y2K alarmist who’s worried that the end cheap oil will bring Western Civilization to her knees. He’s got a blog (doesn’t everyone?) where he writes on little essay a week that has a thriving readership; each weekly entry draws over 500 comments, most from a cadre [...]