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the
current
Monday
Report
below!
[The following is taken, for the most part, from the savetheinternet.
com website, with a few ULA-esque flourishes added here and there.]
"Save the Internet and Free Expression:
Why We Can't COPE"
Net Neutrality allows everyone to compete on a level playing field
and is the reason that the Internet is a force for economic innovation,
civic participation and free speech. If the public doesn't speak up
now, Congress will cave to a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign
by telephone and cable companies that want to decide what you
read, what you know, and what you think by passing the COPE
legislation (COPE standing for, and in every sense Orwellian: the
Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act).
This isn't just speculation -- we've seen what happens when the
Internet's gatekeepers get too much control. Last year, Telus --
Canada's version of AT&T -- blocked their Internet customers from
visiting a Web site sympathetic to workers with whom the company
was having a dispute. And Madison River, a North Carolina ISP,
blocked its customers from using competing Internet phone services.
How would the gutting of Network Neutrality affect you?
Google users—Another search engine could pay dominant Internet
providers like AT&T to guarantee the competing search engine opens
faster than Google on your computer.
Innovators with the "next big idea"—Startups and entrepreneurs
will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay
Internet providers for dominant placing on the Web. The little guy
will be left in the "slow lane" with inferior Internet service, unable to
compete.
Political groups—Political organizing could be slowed by a handful
of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay
"protection money" for their websites and online features to work
correctly.
The ULA Literary Revolution website—Independent, grassroots
organizations such as ours already have enough working against us
within a media culture controlled by less than ten extremely for-
profit conglomerations. A financially-tiered system of the Internet
will place a domain such as ours onto the back-most burner of the
cyber world. Our message will end up as far out-of-reach as can be if
this type of classist, strata-faction is institutionalized into the Net.
Shout NO to this – unless you support the push for absolute
conformity of opinion as well as the push for mindless consumerism
to dazzlingly new and dizzying heights.
Bloggers—Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio
clips—silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the
hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets.
Blocking Innovation—Corporate control of the Web would reduce
your choices and stifle the spread of innovative and independent
ideas that we've come to expect online. It would throw the digital
revolution into reverse. Internet gatekeepers are already
discriminating against Web sites and services they don't like:
* In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL
customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.
* In 2005, Canada's telephone giant Telus blocked customers from
visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers
Union during a contentious labor dispute.
* Shaw, a major Canadian cable, internet, and telephone service
company, intentionally downgrades the "quality and reliability" of
competing Internet-phone services that their customers might choose
-- driving customers to their own phone services not through better
services, but by rigging the marketplace.
* In April, Time Warner's AOL blocked all emails that mentioned
www.dearaol.com -- an advocacy campaign opposing the company's
pay-to-send e-mail scheme.
This is just the beginning. Cable and telco giants want to eliminate
the Internet's open road in favor of a tollway that protects their status
quo while stifling new voices, ideas and innovation. If they get their
way, they'll shut down the free flow of information and dictate how
you use the Internet.
Take action NOW in an easy fashion: click on the link below to join
the Save the Internet Petition (which goes out to congresspersons and
senators) to which 700,000 Americans have already added their
electronic John Hancocks.
http://action.freepress.net/campaign/savethenet
Keep in mind: public outcry prevented the FCC (when headed by
Michael Powell, Colin Powell’s son) from allowing conglomerates to
gain enough legal levelage to form near-monopolies over regional
media markets. Can you imagine the majority of a citizenry’s news
and information being spoon-fed to them by ONE SINGLE
CONGLOMERATE, reminiscent of State-run media a la the USSR?
That could have become reality, had concerned citizens not engaged
in the protest. The ULA urges you to be a participant in this debate
and not just a spectator.
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This has been a ULA Action Alert! Don't just sit there,
DO SOMETHING about it!
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GO HERE TO ENTER THE MONDAY REPORT BOX.
