Tech | August 21, 2010 | 32 comments

Senator Al Franken "Net neutrality is the First Amendment issue of our time." we should stop big corporations like Google and Verizon from taking control of our precious internet.

source: http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/10/08/20/sen-al-franken-we-have-free-speech-problem

BRAVATRAVELS
Sen. Al Franken: We Have a Free Speech Problem
By Tim Karr, August 20, 2010

Sen. Al Franken (D.-Minn.) warned a packed house Thursday night in Minneapolis that the corporate takeover of our media, and the government's failure to stop it, is one of the most important issues of our time.

Franken said our media system is at risk everywhere we turn -- from our free speech online to the growing power of companies who own a massive number of media outlets.

Franken was speaking during a hearing featuring Federal Communications Commission Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps.

He spoke about recent efforts by Verizon and Google to push a "policy framework" on Washington that transfers control over Internet content from the people who go online into the hands of a few powerful corporations.
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32 comments // Senator Al Franken "Net neutrality is the First Amendment issue of our time." we should stop big corporations like Google and Verizon from taking control of our precious internet. // Video

  • mitekillem
    • 0
      mitekillem  

    • The Internet should be protected, as it is the epitome of free-speech. It is the free exchange of ideas. It's an open forum, where anything can be talked about. Facts, information, and ideas of those willing to trade them, should be able to do so freely.

      However, the problem is companies facilitate the internet. They provide the pipe-lines.

      -Should we find a way to wirelessly connect our computers together from one, another, in an efficient way, that needs no outside party or service, then we surely would own it - and it could not be regulated without violating privacy rights and constitutional rights.

    • 1 year ago
  • iamaman
    • 0
      iamaman  
    • Image

    • Meg Whitman Silent On Campaign’s Opposition To Net Neutrality

      It’s been widely reported that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is a self-admitted “illiterate” when it comes to computers. But some have suggested that he could still put forward sound technology policy because he surrounds himself with tech-savvy advisers, such as former Hewlett-Packard chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina and former eBay president and CEO Meg Whitman.

      But it’s unclear how much he is listening to them. Yesterday, McCain finally released his technology platform. (Until this time, “technology” was not even listed in the Issues section of his campaign website.) His plan supposedly focuses on innovation, but in reality, it often repeats McCain’s previous non-innovative positions, such as his opposition to net neutrality:

      When Regulation Is Warranted, John McCain Acts. John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like “net-neutrality,” but rather he believes that an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices is the best deterrent against unfair practices.

      This position is misguided and opposed by major Internet innovators. As Free Press explains, net neutrality preserves a “free and open Internet” by preventing “from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination.”

      Read more: http://nomeg2010.com/the-issues/mccain-adviserformer-ebay-ceo-meg-whitman-silent...

    • 1 year ago
  • iamaman
    • 0
      iamaman  

    • net neutrality should already be covered under the constitution through freedom of the press and freedom of speech. it will go to the supreme court since the republicans have proven that they are willing to sabotage the current democratic leadership in order to cover up their own politically dysfunctional actions for the past 2 terms.

      they should be called the Grand Obstructionist Party.

    • 1 year ago
  • Paratus
    • +1
      Paratus  

    • I agree that the new should remain free of corporate control. I do not see that it is a greater benefit that we have the net under government control. I would like to see a text of any law proposed in this arena. I don't trust the government not to exerts its control any more than any corporation.

    • 1 year ago
  • ampersand
  • remanns
    • 0
      remanns  

    • You know,....the suits are going to make that man "disappear" .

      "We can't let companies write the rules that they're supposed to follow," he said. "Because if that happens those rules are going to be written only to protect corporations".

    • 1 year ago
  • SarahAna
  • iamaman
    • 0
      iamaman  
    • SarahAna:

      perceiving "god" is purely subjective, an individuals personal relationship with their existence and the world they were born into. no one is in total control of everything! is god smarter than me? is the internet smarter than me? perhaps if they were actual entities, but they are not. they are just reservoirs of human contemplation.

    • 1 year ago
  • Radical_Centrist
    • +3
      Radical_Centrist  

    • There are quite a few Politicians who have been fighting this fight LONG before Al Franken ever got to Washington. Ron Paul, Barney Frank, & Dennis Kucinich to name a few.

    • 1 year ago
  • dr_robert14
    • +1
      dr_robert14  

    • The Internet ought to be considered an international forum, anyone can say or do anything without being subject to any laws besides UN rulings and the Geneva Convention.

    • 1 year ago
  • NotFooled
  • BRAVATRAVELS
  • s_peak
    • +4
      s_peak  

    • I fucking love Al Franken!

      Thank you Al, for being one of the last few politicians that actually gives a shit about people. Couldn't have said it better myself!

    • 1 year ago
  • artemis6
  • remanns
  • NotFooled
    • +4
      NotFooled  

    • If you give the government the power to censor what others say, you are giving them the right to censor what you can say.

    • 1 year ago
  • im1mjrpain
  • im1mjrpain
    • +7
      im1mjrpain  

    • Google’s agreement with Verizon to speed certain Internet content to users opens the door to the complete sterilization of the world wide web as a force for political change. Under Google’s takeover plan, the Internet will closely resemble cable TV, independent voices will be silenced and the entire Internet will be bought up by transnational media giants.

    • 1 year ago
  • s_peak
  • zHellas
  • bailey78
    • +4
      bailey78  

    • So does this mean that another war is going to happen? You know the war to end all wars on the internet.? I'm willing to bet that in the next two years we will not have what we have today. a some what free search engine that will bring us all to the same place for free. Those that want to pay more to get full access to the net will have it those that just want to get E-mails will pay a little less that is what I see in our future.

    • 1 year ago
  • Sparky2U
    • +4
      Sparky2U  

    • I never use the google search engines anymore. Bing is better and so far not a part of the Google/Verizon inbreeding. I have a Verizon cell phone but no internet and it will stay that way. The jerks.

    • 1 year ago
  • John_Galt
  • KingBot
  • BRAVATRAVELS
  • Incredulous
  • Stever_B
  • bailey78
  • artemis6
  • BRAVATRAVELS
    • +4
      BRAVATRAVELS  
    • Image

    • Many articles have been written in the New York Times in regards to this important issue..

      http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/business/media/16link.html?_r=1&ref=net_ne...

      WHEN elephants fight, the saying goes, only the grass gets trampled.

      Ted S. Warren/Associated Press
      Devin Theriot-Orr of Riseup.
      Last week, two elephants — Google and Verizon — came together to propose a vision for the Internet that represented what many characterize as a retreat by Google from its past strict adherence to so-called net neutrality. The phrase net neutrality, really more of a rallying cry than a technical term, describes a policy that would prohibit Internet service providers from exploiting their role in delivering information to favor their own content, or the content of the highest bidders.

      The two companies were presumed to be on opposite sides of this issue since Google bases its business on an open Internet and Verizon, among other things, sells access to the Internet. For the sake of getting commitments from Verizon to support a “neutral” Internet delivered on hard wires, Google wrote on one of its blogs, it agreed to some exceptions: no neutrality for the Internet delivered wirelessly and for “additional, differentiated” online services.

      But how do things look from the perspective of the grass? Is there reason to worry when two elephants join tails?

      •

      Far below Google and Verizon or Facebook and AT&T on the information network are the small, independent Internet service providers like Riseup.net, a nonprofit collective based in Seattle that hosts e-mail and e-mail lists. As one link in the chain of the Internet, hosts like Riseup already operate at the mercy of the corporations that do most of the moving of packets of information across the Internet.

      “Net neutrality would be a good thing, but so many other things would have to happen to level the playing field,” Elijah Saxon, a graduate student in sociology and part of the Riseup collective, said in an interview. The big players have resources — bigger, faster computers — that make their services quicker, he said, independent of the speed they are carried along the Internet.

      “It is not one of the debates we are involved in,” he added. “It tends to be between industry titans.”

      Created in 2000 by antiglobalization advocates, Riseup “started with a handful of accounts on a few donated PCs stashed in someone’s basement,” Devin Theriot-Orr, an immigration lawyer who is also part of the core group of a dozen or so who run the site, wrote in an e-mail. “Ten years later, we are still volunteer-driven and have a large user base from all over the world.”

      Riseup handles hundreds of thousands of e-mails a day, and the groups whose lists it hosts — animal rights outfits, freegans, guerrilla gardeners, edible-forest enthusiasts, squatters, anarchist-book sellers — send to three million addresses, Mr. Theriot-Orr said.

      Riseup was leery of describing the groups: in the possibly overstated words of Mr. Saxon, “Any group we name would not want to be named.”

      With Riseup’s connections to political groups, you may think it is most concerned that a nonneutral Internet would be a threat to its often politicized communications; that, in essence, a nonneutral carrier could punish political groups it disagreed with.

      But both Mr. Saxon and Mr. Theriot-Orr said their bigger fear was the additional level of monitoring — they call it surveillance — that an Internet with built-in nonneutrality would require: monitoring so that packets of information can be routed at the agreed-upon speed and that premiums can be charged.

    • 1 year ago
  • PressCore
    • +4
      PressCore  

    • I can't be the only person who understands the terms Monopoly
      and anti Trust Statutes. Before the Dept. of Justice became so
      subverted by the Flunkie Bureau of Insects to become the Dept.
      of Injustice it is today in its heinous infamy...It recognized its lawful
      responsibility to break up Monopolies such as Verizon & Google
      are scheming to create. You have to know its no longer the
      Government of We the People. Now it's the Gummint of we the
      n words. The Corporate Party bought it long ago to use as its tool
      because to capitalists, we are their market, and thus their property.

      It is refreshing to know that Senator Al Franken isn't in their pocket.
      Imho politicians have more in common with prostitutes than with
      law abiding citizens. It's obvious that any entity spending $14 Billion
      a year on itself as perks, then hesitates to enact unemployment
      insurance extensions in a Depression because of the debt their
      predecessors passed on to us through them has double standards.
      And is badly out of touch with the working people their Corporate
      masters exploit and abuse. No conscionable person would accept
      the role of Corporate clerk while the taxpayers fund their salaries.
      Such conflicts of interest to sell us out make them hos turning tricks.

      No wonder they want to control the Internet. It's the only mass media
      left which guarantees unabridged freedom of expression exposing
      their corruption and scandles. If we let them accomplish that by apathy
      they may as well call themselves Tass and Pravda. Because both of
      them will be state run. As the Russians know, there's no Tass in Pravda
      and no Pravda in Tass. Meaning no " truth " in the " news " you hear,
      and no " news " in the so called " truth " you hear. It's the same information
      highway Robbery refined. When they want to vote the uberrich $876 Billion
      in tax cuts which the working people will have to pay, it's obvious we're
      johns to them. Those same uberrich own controlling shares in the
      Corporations they clerk for. No money comes without strings.They own them.
      It shouldn't come as any surprise to you then, that they feel their Corporate
      masters own you too.

    • 1 year ago
  • BRAVATRAVELS
    • +6
      BRAVATRAVELS  

    • This is a serious issue and we should pay a lot attention to what is going on. If we keep silent they will keep us silent forever... If you care about free speech and equality u must speak up for net neutrality....

    • 1 year ago
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