Profit and Censorship are the Goals

I know you're interested and alarmed that Congress is fixin' to give away the Internets to their biggest contributors. They all want Left Blogtopia (y!sctp) to go away and for the Net to look like F** News. The Raw Story has a good post on this with many links leading to sites that can show you how to help.

Also keep in mind that the folks who own the pipes are generally either (a) broadcasters, who are extremely jealous and suspicious of anyone else who figures out how to find the narrow end of their megaphone, or (b) telephone companies, which are happy to let millions of us talk -- so long as our conversations are all one to one. In both cases the democratizing element of the Internet is foreign and frightening to them.

How scared are they? Every bit as scared as their counterparts in the newspaper business, who lash out with hatchet jobs like the one that appeared in the Washington Post, "The Left, Online and Outraged." As scared as the executive editor of the New York Times, who called us "harebrained" "grassy knoll conspiracy" theorists.

That fear is a backhanded compliment. The powerful do not attack the inconsequential.

Their reaction is two pronged and self-contradictory. They try to persuade others (and perhaps themselves) that we are trivial, hysterical, unworthy of attention or rebuttal. And at the same time they are so concerned that they scheme behind closed doors to wall us off in some digital ghetto, or even silence us.

The government in general, and this administration in particular, are scared shitless of us. The big telecom companies want to own the Net for gain, and are perfectly willing to silence the opinions, facts, and truth their congressional lapdogs are so scared of in return for the gift.

You know what to do.