Okay, so its only a small step, its an important step none-the-less.
But whats up with this:
AT&T is “disappointed” in the Judiciary Committee’s vote, the company said in a statement. “We are optimistic that the majority in Congress will see this legislation as an attempt to solve a problem that does not exist,” said Tim McKone, AT&T executive vice president for federal relations.
Hold up: This is a bill designed to ensure that access to the net is open, neutral, disallowing the ability for agreements to be made that would, in essence, cripple the ability for one company to survive, and guarantee another to thrive, all based off of who AT&T or whomever else were to decide they like better (AKA: Who has deeper pockets) and therefore will “allow them to enter into our bandwidth graces”. This is not about a problem that exists now because the laws have yet to be exploited.
Why?
Because doing so would obviously encourage Congress to have something tangible to point at and state — “hmmm… yeah, I can see where this could be a BIG problem if we were to reject a law that would keep this from happening in a much grander scale soon after we reject this. Not on my watch!”
You see, politicians are not idiots, and many of them are actually pretty honest folk who understand a thing or two in regards to how business works… What they don’t have is TONS and TONS of spare time to analyze all of the little details that make all the difference in the world if they are given proper opportunity to understand what these details are. So, much like the efforts of the folks at iPaction who are doing their best to ensure that these same politicians are properly informed as to how these laws do and/or will effect our future as a free culture in ways I really, truly, and in all honesty don’t even want to think about, I can assure you we will be following suit.
Why? Because it would flat out be torture on us creative types who couldn’t create new ideas and new technologies, and new whatever else because our laws were so over the top that the ability to produce and publish these ideas would be EXTREMELY complex as far as the law was concerned, and as such, we simply would not be able to afford any of our ideas due to the fact that the cost to “protect ourselves” and/or simply share our ideas we would first need to attach DNA signatures to each comment we left to a blog such as to ensure that we have properly agreed to whatever rules happen to be in place on that particular blog, and whether we are willing to allow them to take ourcomments and “republish” them via web feeds, etc..
With all of this, one thing is for sure… everything within our legal righs and power will be used to block your tactics, and ensure freedom expressed via a truly free culture, exists in place of your control freak/power hunry/self serving attempt to take away our freedoms so you can buy nicer golf clubs and play at nicer country clubs, or simply feel like “you are the one in charge!” of the rest of us.
Hey AT&T — Just let it be known… If you keep pushing at this… you and I? We’re not friends no more ;)
Okay, a bit tongue in cheek for the last sentence, as it time to bring it down a notch. But lets get real here. The Internet reached utility state quite a while back, even if that isn’t exactly how things are currently in place or how the business world would like it to be. What’s funny about this all is that we already have the wireless grid technology that would, for all intents and purposes, allow a small community — say a city the size of Kirkland, WA, USA, where I grew up, to purchase, install, and EASILY provide the power to run the entire system via solar panels, providing mind blowing wireless access speeds to each and every community member at reasonable, utility based rates in which would allow each of to stay connected and communicate without having to “know someone in the business”.
If not obvious from that last statement, we could turn this into a “free speech” movement so fast you wouldn’t have time to come up with a speech to attempt to counter act a movement that would be representing exactly what it would be… A fight to maintain our freedoms to communicate without control, boundary, or other forms of censorship that keep us from being able to be who we are and/or who we want to be, or even share with out friends and family the things we would like to share with them because the same ability for you to communicate does not exist where I live and/or vice-versa. Why? Not because the technology doesn’t exist or because its to expensive, but because you get to decide for the rest of us who gets access to what, and for what price. In fact, your already doing that now, although its not widely known. Maybe because that kind of stuff is monitored? Don’t know, and don’t want to suggest that it is. But the power to monitor exists, and its easy enough right now to filter content that you dont want propogated, so in and of itself, this is reason enough to maintain Net Neutrality such that you do not have the ability to do this, and expect to get away with it because “how are they going to stop us? We own them for all intents and purposes!”
You see, because of Free Speech you can say things like. The problem is that the direction you want to take this would allow you to both continue saying this, as well as mean it, as no matter what, there wouldnt be anything we could do about it.
As such, if Net Neutrality does not continue forward the rest of will have these freedoms stripped from our rights as citizens of the United States of America. So, in essence, if this doesn’t pass, I guess it would be about who we know, and how much we are willing to pay to know you, now wouldn’t it. (thats a statement, not a question)
So what would happen if AT&T or any of the other players decided to try and play the system into their favor, using comments such as,
“We are optimistic that the majority in Congress will see this legislation as an attempt to solve a problem that does not exist,”
to manipulate the system by leaving off the words “quite yet” from the above statement?
Here’s a hint: Are you sure they will see what you think you can convince them you are suggesting doesn’t exist? Cuz’ between myself and the rest of white hat hacking community I can promise you one thing…
We’ll make sure that they understand the truth… you can count on that one without any doubt whatsoever.
I promise… I haven’t even started to raise my voice yet… And I know a lot of others who feel the exact same way. Just because you wear a suit, doesn’t mean you know how this stuff works… Don’t forget that, k?
Thanks.
Update: Oh, and one last thing… Fortunately I happen to live within the district borders of Senator Orrin Hatch, who has a proven history of responding in letter form to my concerns. No doubt, he will find interest in understanding just how important of an issue this is to those in whom he represents, which, given his position of leadership in the past, present, and without a doubt, future (remember, he’s from Utah… thing don’t change here in Utah all that fast, so undoubtedly his landslide victorys will continue as long as he feels capable of fulfilling his duties as a well respected Senator.) means that if given proper understanding of how those in whom he represents feel about this, he will undoubtedly pay attention and respoind accordingly. Guess who’s going to be getting a letter from yours truly next week?
Good guess.
