Comments on: Stand Up Against the US Telecomm Industry’s Campaign to Steal the Net – Without Leaving Your Desk http://beyond-school.org/2007/09/19/stand-up-against-the-us-telecomm-industrys-campaign-to-steal-the-net-without-leaving-your-desk/ More learning. Less schooliness. Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:17:15 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Clay Burell http://beyond-school.org/2007/09/19/stand-up-against-the-us-telecomm-industrys-campaign-to-steal-the-net-without-leaving-your-desk/comment-page-1/#comment-510 Clay Burell Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:28:00 +0000 http://beyond-school.org/?p=345#comment-510 My reply to the Paid Attacker of Net Neutrality (who, again, allows no reader input on his website for very obvious reasons: it's full of disinformation and FOX News type slander of opposing views):<br/><br/><i>LOBBYIST, Since you work for the telecom industry (decent of you to make the disclosure), it's not surprising you're against net neutrality. Your claim that "nothing happened" after a million plus letters where collected and sent last year is logically empty, since you can't claim to have that knowledge. And you surely know that Congress did not, surprisingly, roll over for the telecom lobby last year in the first of many battles your well-funded lobby will wage.<br/><br/>As for your last red herring, the "federal regulation" boogeyman, let's not be fear-mongers here. Federal regulation is what keeps our roads, highways, and airways intact, our water clean. It's not always a bad thing.<br/><br/>And it often helps your paymasters through regulating corporate welfare.<br/><br/>Bottom line: nobody's paying me to support net neutrality. Somebody is paying you to have a website (I just visited) dedicated to taking it from me.</i> My reply to the Paid Attacker of Net Neutrality (who, again, allows no reader input on his website for very obvious reasons: it’s full of disinformation and FOX News type slander of opposing views):

LOBBYIST, Since you work for the telecom industry (decent of you to make the disclosure), it’s not surprising you’re against net neutrality. Your claim that “nothing happened” after a million plus letters where collected and sent last year is logically empty, since you can’t claim to have that knowledge. And you surely know that Congress did not, surprisingly, roll over for the telecom lobby last year in the first of many battles your well-funded lobby will wage.

As for your last red herring, the “federal regulation” boogeyman, let’s not be fear-mongers here. Federal regulation is what keeps our roads, highways, and airways intact, our water clean. It’s not always a bad thing.

And it often helps your paymasters through regulating corporate welfare.

Bottom line: nobody’s paying me to support net neutrality. Somebody is paying you to have a website (I just visited) dedicated to taking it from me.

]]> By: Clay Burell http://beyond-school.org/2007/09/19/stand-up-against-the-us-telecomm-industrys-campaign-to-steal-the-net-without-leaving-your-desk/comment-page-1/#comment-509 Clay Burell Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:24:00 +0000 http://beyond-school.org/?p=345#comment-509 A Telecom Corporate shill at an anti-net neutrality website _that does not allow comments_ left this bit of PR on my site. I've deleted it because the username links back to the spineless site ("We'll attack net neutrality on other sites, but won't allow comments attacking our position on our site"), but I'll leave the comment here as a masterpiece of standard PR and misinformation:<br/><br/>Clay, I consult for a group in DC that includes AT&T from the telecom field. I can't speak for AT&T, but I can safely say, this FreePress letter is not very helpful.<br/><br/>The lack of specifics is telling. How does the telecom industry want to kill the Internet? Doesn't say. And why would they want to? If they removed the content people like on the Internet, either people would get their Internet from cable or another competitor, or they would get Congress to go after them.<br/><br/>Lastly, this one claim is especially dubious: "Last year we sent 1.5 million letters to Congress and halted the phone and cable industry efforts to kill Net Neutrality." OK, so they sent letters, and... what happened? Nothing. Apparently they're turning away from that, because they haven't gotten anywhere.<br/><br/>The only consistency is they want more federal regulation. But the Internet has done pretty well without being regulated, thank you very much.<br/>[End of AT&T Lobbyist's comment]<br/><br/>--<br/><br/>My reply will follow. A Telecom Corporate shill at an anti-net neutrality website _that does not allow comments_ left this bit of PR on my site. I’ve deleted it because the username links back to the spineless site (“We’ll attack net neutrality on other sites, but won’t allow comments attacking our position on our site”), but I’ll leave the comment here as a masterpiece of standard PR and misinformation:

Clay, I consult for a group in DC that includes AT&T from the telecom field. I can’t speak for AT&T, but I can safely say, this FreePress letter is not very helpful.

The lack of specifics is telling. How does the telecom industry want to kill the Internet? Doesn’t say. And why would they want to? If they removed the content people like on the Internet, either people would get their Internet from cable or another competitor, or they would get Congress to go after them.

Lastly, this one claim is especially dubious: “Last year we sent 1.5 million letters to Congress and halted the phone and cable industry efforts to kill Net Neutrality.” OK, so they sent letters, and… what happened? Nothing. Apparently they’re turning away from that, because they haven’t gotten anywhere.

The only consistency is they want more federal regulation. But the Internet has done pretty well without being regulated, thank you very much.
[End of AT&T Lobbyist's comment]

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My reply will follow.

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