I thought I might let you know that the ad you are carrying (as are we) is rather dodgy. Atrios noted it as well.
Media Citizen alerts us — and many other blogs — to the fact that the ad at the right for “www.dontregulate.org” is in fact a classic piece of astroturf: a fake “grass roots” campaign that is actually fronting for Big Telcoms like AT&T and BellSouth, who are trying to destroy one of the foundations of Internet freedom, “Net Neutrality” and replace it with a two-tier system that puts corporate favorites on the fast track and shunts all the rest of the rabble onto the horsepath to hobble along as they may. (Yes, this is the group that former Cli nton mouthpiece Mike McCurry is shilling for.) So in the interest of free inquiry and all that, feel free to peruse their ad — but know that they are trying to play with your head in a most cynical fashion. Go to MediaCitizen for the full story: Telcos Seek to Deceive Bloggers with Cartoon.
Thank you – a very important warning.
Like I told BooMan, this issue is actually one of semantics. If you don’t think of “net neutrality” but instead think of “common carriers,” the issue becomes at once both simpler and easier to discuss with your representatives and senators.
A “common carrier” is an entity that has to carry all of the traffic it was designed for at the same rate, no matter who originated the traffic. If you are a common carrier railroad, you can’t give preferential pricing to Southern Pacific traffic and charge B&O traffic three times the going rate because you don’t like their CEO. A common carrier telephone company can’t charge more for calls originating from Bellsouth than it does from Qwest. And a common carrier Internet Service Provider can’t give Time/Warner packets preferential treatment vis-a-vis packets from Booman Tribune.
Net neutrality might be a fuzzy word, but congresspeople know about common carriers. They’ve dealt with them for years.
I tried asking Booman about this yesteerday in the Open Thread, but he didn’t bother to respond.
It’s all about the “free market” for the telcoms, keeping the pipeline free for profits. & all the benefits they promise come with those . . .
And we all know how well that’s worked in the past.
and a link to this diary is currently frontpaged at MLW.
Once you click and find out who’s behind it, is anyone fooled?
I’m advocating massive click-throughs so that lots of telecom money helps support BooMan and efforts to preserve Al Gore’s internet.
i was.