Our favorite loon, Dave Winer, is on the soapbox again seeking support from politicians for his media-hating jihad:
Over the weekend I sent a simple idea to Cameron Barrett, who works for the Clark campaign, and to Jim Moore who works for Dean. The message: I would love to see their candidates make an impassioned plea to keep the Internet free of interference from the entertainment industry…I would happily give money to candidates for ads that warn that the media industry is trying to rob us of our future, and explains how important it is to protect the independence of the Internet.
Winer’s political sophistication is less than remarkable; his analysis holds that any organization he can describe as “big” is necessarily a force for oppression and probably out to get him personally, and he’s even invented a word (BigCos) to express this profound view. So he naturally takes it as given that Big Media Cos are out to destroy the Internet because it’s his livelihood, and for no other reason.
So we need only ask for the evidence that media companies are out to destroy the Internet to put this silly complaint to bed, sure in the knowledge that Winer can’t produce, just as Lessig can’t support his claim that the Original Internet was a free-for all, first-come first-served, random access network. These myths are extremely popular these days, but there’s not much to them.
See also Doc Searls and Jeff Jarvis.