SlowpokeBlog

While everyone was distacted by the immigration debate last week, another debate was simmering about pending legislation that would end "net neutrality" -- a clunky term meaning all sites on the internet are equally available to the user. Telecom companies want to prioritize delivery based on whether a site pays them fees or not. As you might imagine, this would end the democratic nature of the internet, pretty much destroying it. Whoever controls the flow of information defines reality, and that's why this internet bill is so important -- like campaign finance reform, it's a meta-issue that has bearing on all other issues. Good sources of information about this heinous measure can be found here and here.

Elite wrongdoing seldom manages to shock me these days, but I was more or less floored by the telecom industry's PR site, headed up by former Clinton press secretary-turned-pathetic-corporate shill Mike McCurry. It's called "Hands Off the Internet," and it's a stunning piece of astroturf. Posing as a people-powered grassroots site, it features a warm-and-fuzzy photo of the raised hands of a racially-diverse group, and a prominent image of an activist button saying "Say NO to Government Regulation of the Internet." (The Orwellian nature of this inversion is duly noted in the cartoon.) But the real kicker is a crappily-drawn Flash animation making fun of those of us who wish to "save the internet." While it's possible that the telecoms couldn't find a good artist who would participate in such a work of darkness, my guess is that the movie is intentionally amateurish, so as to look like ordinary people -- like Billy the high school newspaper editorial cartoonist -- are contributing to the cause. It's brilliantly insidious. Yet it is belied by this page, which shows the member organizations of "Hands Off the Internet," and which I provide as the appropriate entry-point to the site.

To be clear, "net neutrality" (or "open internet" as I prefer) has been around since the beginning of the web. It is not some new, towering pile of regulation as suggested in the animation. Also, the narrator of the movie asks, "Who should control the future of the internet? The government or the people?" That's funny; I thought that in a democracy, the government was the voice of the people. It's a classic Republican maneuver: redefining massive global conglomerates as "the people." (Whether our government is in fact a democracy, as opposed to a plutocracy, is of course another matter.)