You prolly saw this already but it pissed me off and I need to blog on it. Goodwin can suck it; isn’t this how the SA got started? Or at least, there’s some rhyming going on here. It’s never a good thing when an entrenched power rounds up bored, underemployed young men and stands them up in opposition to populists and progressives.

Comcast Blocking: First the Internet — Now the Public
February 25th, 2008 by jstearns
There was huge turnout at today’s public hearing in Boston on the future of the Internet. Hundreds of concerned citizens arrived to speak out on the importance of an open Internet. Many took the day off from work — standing outside in the Boston cold — to see the FCC Commissioners. But when they reach the door, they’re told they couldn’t come in.

The size of the crowd is evidence that many Americans don’t want giant corporations like Comcast and Verzion to decide what we can do and where we can go on the Internet.
But will the FCC hear these voices? For many people who showed up on time for the hearing, apparently not.

Comcast — or someone who really, really likes Comcast — evidently bused in its own crowd. These seat-warmers, were paid to fill the room, a move that kept others from taking part.

[Update: Comcast admits to paying people to stack the room in their favor. Read the report.]  Read more 

Typical toll tower on Rhine in Bingen

Finally—we’re nothing if not open-minded here at The Mighty Corrente Buiding—a solid reason to vote for Obama—a dogwhistle I can hear.

Via Ezra, this from XKCD:

Obama has shown a real commitment to open government. When putting together tech policy (to take an example close to home for xkcd) others might have gone to industry lobbyists. Obama went to Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons (under which xkcd is published) and longtime white knight in the struggle with a broken system over internet and copyright policy. Lessig was impressed by Obama’s commitment to open systems — for example, his support of machine-readable government information standards that allow citizens’ groups to monitor what our government is up to. Right now, the only group that can effectively police the government is the government itself, and as a result, it’s corrupt to the core. Through these excellent and long-overdue measures, Obama is working to fight this corruption.

Obama stands against bad governing not only in his support of specific practices like open data standards and basic network neutrality, but in his work against corruption from day one.

The Mighty Corrente Building, and the blogosphere in general, could not run and would not even exist without open standards, so Obama’s embrace of them is good news. For example:  Read more 

 Read more 

If you want the cable weasels to run the Internet like they run cable—or if you want the whole Internet to work like AOL—this is the decision for you.  Read more 

Ntodd thinks just because he’s a professor of computer science, he knows more than I do about Net Neutrality. I’m not going to read it, because whatever he says is just his way of asking me to use the bigger strap-on during his next session in my dungeon, but perhaps you can make some sense out of his prattle.

In all seriousness, I’ve not yet thought about his arguments or investigated them, but I do think it’s worth considering what he says, even as I may still end up disagreeing. Share your own thoughts.

If first you don’t succeed, pick a weak Democrat and go in through the back door. That seems to be the plan for the anti-neutrality forces. I was just in MI, and what pisses me off about this story is that the voters rather soundly told Granholm’s uberconservative challenger to get stuffed, so it’s not like she has to be that worried. Worse, Google, who is actually on our side on this issue, is located in her state, but she doesn’t seem to care, nor does she seem to think it’s a good idea to give them a reason to be less in bed with Republicans.  Read more 

The radical in me really likes this idea. Let’s face it: we’re poor when compared to corporations, we don’t get invited to the quail shooting outings and Beltway cocktail parties where policy is truly made, we’re ignored when we march in the millions. So why the hell shouldn’t we jam some phones? It’s not like the fuckers aren’t paid enough to deal with suchlike:

In a scrap that pits lefty grass-roots activists against corporate Democratic suits, MoveOn.org is marshaling its Web-happy masses against the elite, all-Democratic consultants at the Glover Park Group.

The tussle, which has been relatively polite so far, is over the Glover gang’s work on behalf of telecommunications giant Verizon. MoveOn is upset that the firm is helping Verizon block legislation on “net neutrality,” which Web-based companies and advocates criticize as something that could lead to a two-tiered Internet.  Read more 

I had a conversation recently with a woman who works for an ad firm specializing in internet ads. She says, wait for it, that no one in her company knows or is talking about the threat to net neutrality. Heard the same from a family member that works for a company that would be wiped out if Steven’s Tubes bill passes. So this is uplifting to read about:

 Read more 

This is good news, I think. Correct me if I’m reading this wrong. It’s both depressing and heartening to realize that in the end, this battle is all about which large corporation has the most money and lawyers.

SOFIA (Reuters) - Google warned on Tuesday it will not hesitate to file anti-trust complaints in the United States if high-speed Internet providers abuse the market power they could receive from U.S. legislators.

The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee last week approved sweeping communications reform legislation that would make it easier for telephone companies like AT&T to offer subscription television to consumers.

But it narrowly rejected attempts by some lawmakers to strengthen safeguards on Internet service, which had pitted high-speed Internet, or broadband, providers such as AT&T against Internet content companies like Google.  Read more 

Wow. Anyone want to help me make sense of this? It’s pretty…amazing.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.

We aren’t earning anything by going on that internet. Now I’m not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people  Read more 

I think he’s talking about a Disney movie:

My secret super duper Senate sources are telling me that this bill has a long way to pass. To take a small example, the broadcast flag, which the EFF detests, passed in the Senate Committee, but Senator Sununu made it clear that he’s going to revisit the issue on the floor. There are also concerns about new tax measures in the bill, which will prompt more fighting on the floor. Stevens just doesn’t have the 60 needed to pass the measure, and it’s not clear that Frist even wants to schedule the time for it. In addition, the partisanized nature of the net neutrality vote means that Senators are becoming entrenched.  Read more 

So I just finished reading this little summary Matt had on the bill containing the “kill Net Neutrality” language we’ve all been screaming about. Matt says:

So yesterday the Senate Commerce Committee had a markup of the Stevens bill. There are 214 amendments to get through, and they didn’t really get through many of them. The Committee didn’t vote on the net neutrality issue, or the big bill itself. The Senators will pick this up again on Tuesday.

Hear that, kids! There’s still time to make some phone calls! Git busy!

The Stevens bill is being rushed through the process; it’s an extremely complicated piece of legislation with far reaching changes that extend beyond net neutrality. Typically, telecom bills take several Congressional cycles, because it’s hard stuff to understand. The bill just doesn’t need to get done this year, and the whispers that it won’t get done are getting louder. In an election year, a lot of Senators don’t want to have to vote on some of the more controversial provisions. The telecom lobbyists are leaning hard to push this through, and Ted Stevens, ever the appropriator and deal-cutter, wants this badly, so we’ll see what happens.

So that’s where we are on the political front.  Read more 

(Getting annoyed at how many sites aren’t fully functional today)

Go read Skippy’s 4:09pm post today, “Nobody’s really Neutral on Net Neutrality.” It makes a lot of sense. Just as Matt’s perspective makes sense. Food or freedom? Communication or couches? It’s not an easy choice.  Read more 

From the SaveTheInternet website:

rom Blue Meme, May 26, 2006

A U.S. House of Representatives committee has approved a bill that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or impairing their customers’ access to Web content offered by competitors.

The House Judiciary Committee voted 20-13 to approve the bill, called the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act. Bill sponsor James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), the chairman of the committee, was joined by a handful of Republicans and most of the committee’s Democrats in supporting the bill.  Read more