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From Air Gear, Chapter 206, page 15.
My mother and I waited for two hours Tuesday morning to vote. In the end, Georgia wasn't the swing state pollsters thought it might be, but since Barack Obama took Ohio and Florida, it didn't matter. Above, the manga Obama, rechristened "John Omaha." At least he looks like Obama; the personality is a bit more Bill Clinton...
A silent battle brews in Washington over the fate of the internet. Currently, a bill that would end network neutrality and give control of internet channels to telecoms (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc) is making the rounds in Congress.
Network neutrality (excellent link) is one of the founding principles and virtues of the internet, allowing consumers to choose what websites to visit without interference from or filtering by the networks. It's why the internet offers big corporations, small companies, and individuals a level playing field.
If the telecoms win, however, they will create a two-lane internet, with a slow and a fast lane. Website owners will be forced to pay an undetermined fee to the telecoms to be placed in the fast lane, and to ensure nothing "happens" to their connection (the parallel between this and Mafioso "protection" is striking). Telecoms could then block or significantly slow sites that chose not to pay, or that offended the telecoms for whatever reason. They could also prevent access to sites that offer competing services.
Only the telecoms, and the Congressmen swayed by their money, like that scenario. Other internet giants, including Google, Microsoft, and Intel, are among the bill's many opponents. In the blog world, sites like Instapundit and Daily Kos agree that the bill's a disaster.
Republicans (this debate splits down party lines, at least in Congress) dismiss the bill's critics as hyperbolic doomsayers, saying there's no reason to believe the worst of the telecoms. They're wrong.
Plenty of unfortunate precedents exist, from the AOL scandal (if you still have AOL email, get gmail now), to the policy of Canada's Shaw, a cable TV company that "is charging an extra $10 a month to subscribers who want to use a competing Internet telephone service" (savetheinternet.com). Furthermore, since AT&T has already helped the NSA spy on millions of Americans without proper legal authority, it's naive to think that the same thing won't (hasn't?) happen again.
It's important that bloggers and other internet users act now to preserve the internet as we know it. The telecoms may have a multi-millionaire dollar lobby, but American internet users have multi-million strong voice.
Learn how you can help at savetheinternet.com.
Read more about this issue at NPR, The Raw Story, TPM Cafe and MetaFilter.
