[Infowarrior] - Information Highway Robbers

[Richard Forno]

Information Highway Robbers
>From In These Times, May 16, 2006
By Joel Bleifuss
http://www.freepress.net/news/print.php?id=15499

What makes the Internet revolutionary is that it is democratic, open to
anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. That could soon change.

As In These Times went to press, the House was setting to vote on the
³Communications Opportunity Promotion and Enhancement (COPE) Act of 2006,² a
bill written by the telephone and cable TV corporations. Among other
provisions, the act formally guts what is known as the First Amendment of
the Internet‹³network neutrality.² (The Senate will consider a similar bill
in late May or early June.)

³Net neutrality ensures that the public can view the smallest blog just as
easily as the largest corporate Web site and prevents companies like AT&T
from rigging the playing field for only the highest-paying sites and
services,² says Timothy Karr, the campaign director for Free Press, a media
reform organization. Karr is coordinating SavetheInternet.com, a bipartisan
coalition working to preserve network neutrality.

By not including network neutrality protections, the COPE Act upholds a 2005
ruling from the Federal Communications Commission that allows Internet
service providers‹telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon and cable
companies like Comcast‹to charge Web content creators a fee to make their
sites readily accessible.

For example, take a filmmaker who wants to produce a documentary and
distribute it to the public on his Web site. Under this new legislation, a
service provider like AT&T would be able to charge the filmmaker for making
his content available to their customers. Or, if AT&T did not approve of the
documentary, it could refuse to let its customers access it all
together‹thereby allowing corporate censorship of a medium now characterized
by the freewheeling exchange of ideas. In effect, the legislation allows the
telecom industry to become the tollbooth operator on the information
superhighway. The Internet will begin to look like cable TV, where viewers
can only choose from available options.

SavetheInternet.com puts it this way: ³The Internet has always been driven
by innovation. Web sites and services succeeded or failed on their own
merit. Without net neutrality, decisions now made collectively by millions
of users will be made in corporate boardrooms.²

To harness the power of those millions is the goal of Save the Internet.com,
whose key players in addition to Free Press include MoveOn, Punk Voter, Gun
Owners of America and Consumers Union, along with bloggers like Glenn
Reynolds at InstaPundit and Matt Stoller at MyDD. But as netizens are
heeding a call to arms, the telecom industry has responded with a
counterattack.

Karr observes, ³How can you tell when corporations are running scared? When
they wind up their coin-operated frontmen in Washington to unleash a tide of
untruths upon the public.²

He is referring to the man leading the campaign against net neutrality, Mike
³Industry Sock Puppet² McCurry, the former press spokesman for President
Bill Clinton. McCurry is now a partner at Public Strategies, a PR firm whose
motto is ³managing campaigns for corporations around the clock, around the
world.² In other words he is a 24-hour call boy for the telecom industry.

Using a classic PR technique, McCurry obfuscates the issue, invoking the
First Amendment and dismissing net neutrality as ³regulation.² Writing on
the Huffington Post, he addressed his critics: ³The First Amendment of the
Internet is under assault! Š The Internet has worked absent regulation, and
now you want to introduce it for a solution to what?²

At Verizon, McCurry has gotten Peter B. Davidson, the senior vice president
for federal government relations, on message. In a mass e-mail to the
constituents of Congress members, Davidson told the voters ³troubling Œnet
neutrality¹ provisions Š have the effect of regulating the Internet. Š Urge
your representative, [insert name of representative], to support the swift
passsage of a clean, unencumbered cable-choice bill that will give consumers
real choice and bring lower prices to the cable market WITHOUT regulating
the Internet.²

McCurry is a masterful propagandist. Consider his 561-word Huffington Post
screed against the slimy ³net neuts.² Of the 26 sentences in this ³essay,²
11 of them were rhetorical questions. Such questions allow a person to hide
behind the guise of critical inquiry and make unsubstantiated allegations.
For example, I might ask, ³Mike McCurry, when did you decide to become an
industry whore?² (Well, sometimes unsubstantiated.)

Another of McCurry¹s facile ploys is to provide his readers with false
choices. Consider this sentence: ³I¹d rather have a robust Internet that can
handle the volume of traffic that we will put on it in the near future
rather than a public Internet where we all wait in line for the next
porno-spammer to let his content go before we get to have arguments like
this.² That¹s our choice?

Responding to McCurry¹s nonsense, ITT Senior Editor David Sirota observed:
³Mike McCurry is in the middle of one of those tailspins of dishonesty and
contradiction that is so wildly out of control you just have to sit back,
grab some popcorn and watch with laugh.²

While Stoller, at MyDD, added: ³Bashing Mike McCurry is not only fun, it¹s
important, as there must be a cost to his decision to sell us out.²

Such costs must also be borne by those in Congress who have decided to help
gut net neutrality. The most prominent Democratic sponsor of the COPE Act is
Rep. Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther who represents Chicago¹s South Side.

How did this one-time militant morph into the Step Œn¹ Fetchit of the
telecom industry? (Note the rhetorical question.) Perhaps the $1 million
that AT&T (formerly SBC) gave to the Rebirth of Englewood Community
Development Corporation has something to do with it. Rush and his wife
founded and serve on the board of this company, which employs their son and
which used AT&T money to build the Bobby L. Rush Center for Community
Technology.

Sheila Krumholz, the acting director of the Center for Responsive Politics,
the nonprofit group that tracks the role of money in politics, noted, ³It is
a clear conflict of interest for Rep. Rush to weigh in on this bill, much
less take a leadership role championing the position of a company that paid
$1 million to name a building after him.²

While the $1 million might have completed the bill of sale, the bidding for
Rush¹s services began years ago. Since 1998, telecom companies have
contributed $204,000 to Rush¹s relection campaigns, with AT&T (and its
predecessors) leading the pack at $49,000.

In most mature democracies, this would be against the law, but until we
enact meaningful campaign finance reform, such bribery is perfectly legal.

There are some honorable people in Congress. In the House, Rep. Ed Markey
(D-Mass.) has now introduced the Network Neutrality Act of 2006 that, in his
words, ³is designed to save the Internet and thwart those who seek to
fundamentally and detrimentally alter the Internet as we know it.² However,
the GOP-controlled Rules Committee is unlikely to let it on to the floor.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D.-N.D.)
are currently drafting a net neutrality bill. Whether that bill has a
future‹along with the net as we know it‹depends on the volume of public
protest.

As a start, sign a petition that demands Congress to pass enforceable net
neutrality provisions. Visit http://www.SavetheInternet.com and make your
voice heard.

This article is from In These Times. If you found it informative and
valuable, we strongly encourage you to visit their website and register an
account to view all their articles on the web. Support quality journalism.