The fight to create a nanny state online creates strange bedfellows, like ComCast’s recent alliance with 9 civil rights groups. It also creates obvious pairings like the recent ones between Comcast and both NBC and Viacom. It’s no secret that companies with a vested interest in profiting from channeled, controlled content would be interested in banding together to throttle access and censor the internet.

The civil rights groups aligning with ComCast is a true slap in the face of free speech and free enterprise online. You would think that any group that had been subject to discrimination and control would be pro network neutrality and the freedom that brings, not against it. It seems groups purporting to be pro civil rights would want network neutrality, the ability to have free enterprise and free speech on line. Instead these nine groups have decided that only their group should have freedom online.

Meanwhile the pairing of companies like NBC and Viacom with ComCast in the fight to kill the internet as we know it makes more sense. All of these companies have a vested interest in making money online. What better way to make that money than to keep internet users from visiting any other websites except the few you sponsor? ComCast is already coming under fire from the FCC and internet users for throttling bandwidth and outright blocking some sites. this certainly won’t help them evade scrutiny.

The anti network neutrality coalition wants internet users to believe certain things. One, the want you to think they won’t restrict you from the sites you love. Thanks to ComCast proving that wrong, fewer people should fall for that outright lie. Two, they want you to think that reasonable censorship is OK, in fact, good for you. That’s also a load of bull. Can you imagine the control censorship of the internet would give to corporations and to government? That kind of power is hard to resist abusing, just look at Bush’s tendency to spy on his own citizens, just because we let him.

Network neutrality is vital to free speech and a vital online economy. If you aren’t familiar with the issues behind network neutrality, you can visit Save The Internet to learn more about it and to see the various groups that have banded together in favor of it. I can’t speak for Blorge, but I can say that I personally am in favor of keeping network neutrality alive. Without it the free internet we’ve grown accustomed to is doomed.

Image is courtesy The Consumerist

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Entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 1:33 pm under Internet.

Read more entries by Leslie Poston.
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