As I write this the House is debating the Markey amendment to add network neutrality protections to the COPE Act. I will bring some clips from this to tomorrow’s radioshow.
Today the Washington Post published an Op-Ed from Robert McChesney and Larry Lessig, which breaks down why we need net neutrality in law very simply:
The protections that guaranteed network neutrality have been law since the birth of the Internet — right up until last year, when the Federal Communications Commission eliminated the rules that kept cable and phone companies from discriminating against content providers. This triggered a wave of announcements from phone company chief executives that they plan to do exactly that.
And NPR’s All Things Considered aired a reasonable piece on the net neutrality debate. Reporter Laura Sydell talked to Prof. Lessig, and also to telco-flak Mike McCurrywho insisted that he is a “progressive Democrat” trying to save the poor consumer from higher internet bills brought on by those evil bandwidth-hogs Google and YouTube.
Hey, Mike, if you’re so concerned about the consumers, why don’t you give back your handsome lobbyist fees and advise your clients to spend the millions they blow on lobbying against net neutrality on rolling out infrastructure or discounts to customers?
What? No, you say? Yeah, I thought so.
Just a quick thought question to close things out: what if the billions spent on mergers by SBC in the last ten years had been spent on building broadband infrastructure? I reckon Texas would be the best connected country in the world.
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