SupremeCourt Strikes a Blow Against Freedom Online

Are you surprised??

http://www.democraticmedia.org/news/BrandXdown.html

"Supreme Court's Brand X Decision Endangers the Principle of Net Neutrality
Court Strikes a Blow Against Freedom Online
Battle Now Goes to Congress and the American Public


Note: CDD was one of the petitioners in this case, along with Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America. The Media Access Project served as legal counsel for CDD.

June 27, 2005

Washington, DC: Today's decision by the Supreme Court to overturn the Ninth Circuit Court's classification of cable modems as a "telecommunications service" (and thus subject to the open access regulations that have long governed the dial-up Internet) poses a grave threat to the future of the Internet.

By upholding the FCC's March 2002 Declaratory Ruling that classified cable Internet as an unregulated "information service," the Supreme Court has paved the way for a privatized, tightly controlled broadband environment that will bear little resemblance to the open, diverse, and competitive Internet of the past.

As the ACLU warned in its Brand X brief to the Supreme Court, ""

to move out of this country.

There is a sense of foreboding to this place. I am sure many Germans felt the same undercurrents in the 1920s and '30s.