The rough voice of dissent is the engine of change. To get the diamonds, all the coal must be allowed.

I can think of hundreds of examples of the danger of not having net neutrality. For example: it would be simple for the Church of Scientology, with its vast sums of money, to buy a corporation that controls the flow of information. With such control, do you think Scientology will allow any negative portrayal of it’s activities?

If you are a Republican, your first impulse may be to support the corporations in their takeover of the net. Is that in your best interest? What if the corporations controlling the net were run by the dreaded Liberals?

Sign the petition. Support Al Franken.

i will sign the petition.

the packets must flow!

I meant “I wouldn’t mind Net Neutrality AND more merger regulation”

(Nothing like preefrooding…)

I like to point out that the media regulations of the past were needed to prevent information monopolies in areas of the country. Deregulation of media was in large part justified because of the ability of the Internet to provide alternative outlets. Without neutrality, however, the Internet cannot properly be that alternative.

As I see it, you either have to maintain Net Neutrality or you need to bring back the strict media merger and distribution regulations of the past. I wouldn’t Net Neutrality AND more merger regulation.

Information monopolies scare me.

It’s also good to remind people that the information boom of network technology had its roots in the forced divestiture of AT&T. Before that, introducing touch-tone dialing was their idea of major advances in communications for a decade.

The new AT&T is going back to the old ways. After buying up the excess bandwidth resulting from the dot com bust, they were happy to increase sales without significant new investment in infrastructure. Now that infrastructure is running out, their solution is to reduce the amount customers can use the network instead of increasing bandwidth. That smells a lot like “But we gave them touch-tone! What more to they want!”

So bring on the Net Neutrality, and let’s also break up some too-large media giants while we are at it. I think people would be surprised by a new surge of innovation, investment and reduction of prices. Where’s Judge Greene when you need him?

That makes no sense unless you are secretly in support of the things you seem to say you are against.