Verizon Wants to shut Down Dissent

I keep putting these up and someday, somebody is going to actually start to worry.

http://www.commoncause.org/KeepInternetOpen

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2006/tc20060202_061809.htm?tr=y&auid=1419242

We're waffling around on here about Paul Hackett's injured pride, Anne Coulter's voting registration and Deadeye Dick.

And what does that do? Diverts our energy from dealing with real issues.

They spent considerable time on it

seemed to think this wouldn't go anywhere

:shrug:

Common Cause every other day.

They're going to try and sneak this land grab through the way the did the DCMA and the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

The Internet is a public utility and they're going to try and privatize it.

Can we really trust Republicans and further, it was tax payers' money that created the Internet in the first place. We have the worst Internet broadband service as it is in the developed world (see below). Finally, as the Interstate highway system gave a huge boost to our economy so would free broadband wireless, but do you think that the ISP would really go along. No, they would rather our economy stagnate for short term profits:

How Much Have Americans Really Paid For Inferior
Broadband Access?

Despite the obstacles erected by big business
interests, I remain excited about the promise of cheap
wireless Internet access via city-funded WiFi
networks.

Unfortunately, cheap is relative, considering
Americans may have already paid through the nose to
the tune of $200 billion for promised upgrades to
existing broadband infrastructures that never
happened.

That's the essence of a new e-book, The $200 Billion
Broadband Scandal, written by Bruce Kushnick (a
telecom analyst for nearly a quarter-century),
http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm
outlining the scam job that allowed the Baby Bells to
push for tax concessions and other financial perks at
the state level.

In return, customers got higher phone bills and
nothing else in return, and certainly not robust
broadband networks. Sounds much like the shell game
drug companies play in recycling "new and improved
versions" of older drugs just to maintain patents on
their
health-harming products and keep that steady flow of
cash coming.

U.S. residents and businesses pay two to three times
as much for slower and poorer quality service than
countries like South Korea and Japan. Since 2001,
according to the International Telecommunications
Union, the United States has fallen from 4th to
16th in the world in broadband penetration.

What passes for broadband in the United States is "the
slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the
developed world."

While about 60 percent of U.S. households do not
subscribe to broadband -- because it is either
unavailable where they live or they cannot afford it
-- most Japanese citizens can access a high-speed
connection that's more than 10 times faster than
what's
available here for just $22 a month.

In fact, Japan is now rolling out ultra-high-speed
access at more than 500 times what the FCC considers
to be "broadband" in this country.

America has become a follower -- not a leader -- in
the broadband economy ahead, and the economic
ramifications are profound.

MuniWireless.com February 1, 2006

Digital Communities

New York Times February 11, 2006

so I do not see the big impact that this would have.

Currently dark fiber would start being used - or am I missing something?

You sound a little P.O'ed, try and take it easy on yourself and keep posting. It takes a little time to get ones message out there, but if it's important DUer's will get the message, that i can promise.

This is important and we certainly don't want one company getting to much control, especially with our internet. K&R

If Dick Cheney's "hunting accident" is the club you've got, then that's the club you use. Take down this administration, break the incestuous links between our government and the mega-corporations, and that's when you can start setting up policies to deal with frustrations like this.

At the moment my own greatest worry is not that Verizon is going to pipe so much television through their own system that they will "shut down dissent." The bandwidth of dissent in the United States is not that high, there are dozens of peculiar sexual fetishes that use up more bandwidth than political dissent, and all this dissent is little more than a sidechannel in the humongous rivers of utter crap flowing through the internet.

What's the latest sex video everyone is downloading? If it's anything like Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, or Paris Hilton, or Tanya Harding's "honeymoon," please, please, dear God, never let it onto my desktop.

Do we pay too much for bandwidth in the United States? Yes. Does all this crap on the internet flood out the good stuff? Yes. But the internet is not quite the same as those fifty channels of your "Basic Cable" television service. On the internet Fox News and the various shopping networks are not squeezing out the better stuff. I can still log onto DU.

Are they making it more expensive than it should be for skinner to run his servers? Yes. But I don't think that's Verizon's goal, to squeeze DU off of the playing field. It's not like cereal boxes on the supermarket shelves. Mostly Verizon and the rest of the telcos are mindless animals sucking the money out of us any way they can. The notion that there might be some sort of "common good" is much too abstract for them, and they are not (yet) turning away paying customers for political reasons. We are not China.

Currently I think the "cutting edges" of this issue in the United States are defined by people who run porn sites, and people who are setting up free or low cost municipal wireless networks. In the United States these are the two groups most likely to have troubles with upstream internet service providers. The major internet service providers are fearful of the anti-porn crusaders, and they see free or low cost municipal internet services as competition. Political dissent isn't on their radar except as they can make some money off of it.

by BushCo and their affiliated cabals, not only of the nation but of the planet . . . it's a threat to the powers that be, and therefore it's in serious jeopardy . . . this is one of the top five issues that we need to concern ourselves with . . .