Net Neutrality — A Cosmic Battle for Democracy
I touched briefly on the net neutrality issue last week, but now Freepress.net and Savetheinternet.com have teamed up to create a great little video that explains the issue in the layman’s terms of an extraterrestrial invasion, where the invading aliens are the big telecom companies. See the story and video here:
More than just a visual gimmick, the UFO frame fits the battle for Net Neutrality surprisingly well.
First, because the phone and cable companies really are aliens to our democracy. They’re the ones who want to overrun our Congress to change the way the Internet works — replacing the “level playing field� we know today with their “gatekeeper� system.
And secondly because their phony “Astroturf� groups have been disguising themselves as Internet-friendly activists (“Invasion of the Body Snatchers�-style) that are actually paid front groups. Hands off the Internet may look and talk like us – but watch for the telltale green pods hidden in their back yards…
And lastly, the whole “Mars Attacks� theme helps to communicate something fundamental: that there’s a battle going on for the future of the Internet, and that citizens need to inform themselves and take action.
You won’t hear much about this issue in the mainstream media, at least not framed in any terms that really analyze what’s at stake. If you do a Google news search for “net neutrality” today, you’ll have to burrow down to result # 78 in order to find an article by a major daily newspaper, where the WaPost gives us:
Sipress writes:
One of the main obstacles is disagreement over whether to require a “net neutrality” condition that would bar AT&T from asking different Internet services to pay different prices for using its lines.
The article does do a good job of explaining the intracacies of the FCC stalemate. However, as usual with mainstream media outlets like the WaPost, the quoted paragraph above is all the content deemed fit to be given to the net neutrality issue - no further analysis or context of what’s really at stake here. I don’t expect the WaPost to actually take a side, that wouldn’t be “objective.” However, giving such short thrift to the deeper issue at stake seems to reveal a particular bias, now doesn’t it Mr. Sipress?
To take action on the matter, go to Savetheinternet.com.
They’ve got links you can use to sign a petition in favor of net neutrality, and to find the phone numbers of your Congressmen, to lobby them on this matter.
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