in the shell

Hey Yanks,

If you care, apparently our gov. is trying to put a bill out making most of the internet the property of big buisness and make us have to pay to use every little thing on it.

I'm So not trying for some political statement, but Im thinking we all want the internet to be free and open to everyone.

If you want, call your congresspeople, senators, everyone and ask them to vote this Down!

Jenni, I hope this isnt on the no no list. If it is erase away.

I've not heard someone say "Hey Yanks" before... And just when I'd used in a conversation last week as an example of what English people going around calling ourselves "us Brits" sounds like (because it sounds weird to talk about yourself with a term that others use for you). I'm amused!

I don't think they can control the internet that well though, since it is international. I wonder how they'd go about it?

Do you have a link to a news article for this? I've looked in several newspapers and can't find it.

Jeff

The actual name of the bill is Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Efficiency Act of 2006. Sometimes known as COPE.

Some of it has to do with the digital tv debacle, but part of it allows for large comunications companies to sell off special privligages like faster load time etc.

It sounds nasty, an attempt to add an ammendment for Net. Neutrality was already defeated, also some of the benifiting companies are apparently donateing huge amounts to the author of the bills personal charities, if one of these articals can be believed.

Whatever is going on, a non neutral net will severely hamper all of us who use it regualarly, especialy accidemics whos sites cannot pay for special treatment.


http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/US_Congress ... t_freedoms

http://news.com.com/Republicans+defeat+ ... 58223.html

http://civic.moveon.org/save_the_intern ... OyR5ng&t=2

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3594861

http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating ... m-bill.asp

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6035614.html

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? ... 26/1438229

The propability that this will actually go through is small and even if it will, most of it's changes will be nullified with other laws. It's simply too bad for business to work out.

Actually it is extremely likely that it will go through, as the only opposition is in the minority in our contry. That minority tried to limit its powers and was put down already, so they have little chance of stoping it now.
In the past, huge outcry and pettioning from citizens has stopped bills like this, so it is important for us to act.


It will in fact be good for the large buisness who monopolize alot of our economy such as the giants of At&T, Comcast, Time Warner. They not o nly own most media, but many food and drink companies as well as other things. They would then be able to put down threats from small companies such as google etc.

It is possible there is resentment on the govenments part for Google's standing up to it against illegal seisure of its records in the recent past.

This is a serious threat at least to American internet users.

If it does go through, something tells me the govt. will no longer be able to have computers hooked up to the net. Not even the NSA will be safe from all the angry hackers.

OH GOOOOOD point!
I never even thought of that!

I wonder if they did...probably not..
sigh.

I do imagine, that anti-discrimination laws do prevent these companies from taking too much advantage of this law, even if it goes through. Can you imagine any of them risking lawsuits because they blocked or hindered access to legitimate sites?

See thats the thing, they are going to set it up so that they will not be libal for "discrimination" because they will make it a money thing.

Like buying better tickets to a play or more percicely buying better advertizing spots in a paper/magazine or advertizing on the superbowl, vs "Mr. Dandies old time Sock Pupet Show!"

Im thinking that it will only apply to those who have I.P.s that belong to bigger companies but aol owns netscape, microsoft owns IE, I dont know who owns Yahoo, maybe At&t or SBC since they have links w/ them.

Its possible that you could get around it by using smaller IPs but Im not a big enough tech head to know that.

Im sorry to keep coming up with no's to your ideas, I really wish those ideas would work. I just know enough about American business dealings to guess at thier tricks to squeze everylast penny out of us.

Yeah, well, I'm not an American and I don't pretend to know how those things will work out, there, but I do think that even the biggest, meanest corporations don't want to enrage their customers too badly. Ofcourse in entertainment business, that happens all too often. Voting with your wallet is usually the best thing to do.

Yeh, If you Non Yanks are lucky you wont have to deal with this.

However, I hope it doesnt just set a preceident that all the other nation's companies follow.

Well, we will see.