The giant telecom companies aren’t going to quietly give up their plans to control what you are allowed to see and hear.
Net neutrality, a guiding principle for preserving a free and fair Internet, means that Internet service providers are not allowed to discriminate based on content for its customers. However, telecommunications firms — like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and others — are firmly against net neutrality because they would like to increase their profits by deciding which websites customers can see, and at what speed. The telecom industry has dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into a lobby campaign against net neutrality. As the FCC now takes up net neutrality rule making, the industry is pushing an “outside approach” of hiring front groups and astroturf operatives.
This morning, representatives from various front groups launched a new coordinated campaign to kill net neutrality. Speaking on Capitol Hill, these front groups took turns decrying the evils of the principle of a fair and unbiased Internet. LULAC, which is funded by AT&T, called Net Neutrality “Obamacare for the Internet.” Americans for Prosperity — a corporate front group founded by oil billionaire David Koch but also funded by telecom interests — unveiled a new ad smearing net neutrality as a “government takeover” (the initial ad buy is $1.4 million [corprocon delinked] dollars). And Grover Norquist, representing his “Americans for Tax Reform” corporate front group, said net neutrality is like what China does, “putting policemen on every corner, on the street or on the Internet.” Watch it:
ThinkProgress has obtained a PowerPoint document which reveals how the telecom industry is orchestrating the latest campaign against Net Neutrality. Authored by representatives from the Atlas Network — a shell think tank used to coordinate corporate front group efforts worldwide — the document lays out the following strategy:
– Slides 7-8 calls for the campaign to target “libertarian minded internet users and video gamers” and “social conservative activists” with anti-government messages and a rebranding of net neutrality as “Net Brutality.”
– Slide 9 calls for a strategy of creating a Chinese blog to compare net neutrality to Chinese government censorship, outreach via social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
– Slides 10-11 detail how representatives met at Grover Norquist’s infamous “Wednesday morning meeting” to orchestrate the new campaign. Norquist is known to use his Wednesday meetings to plot strategy and conservative coalition building towards lobbying goals.
The PowerPoint was created on April 14th, shortly before the campaign website officially launched. The “Net Brutality” [corporocon delinked] website relies heavily on Americans for Prosperity sources, as well as a website called NetCompetition.org — which is openly funded ][corporocon delinked] by the American Cable Association, At&T, Comcast, and the US Telecom Association.
During the Jack Abramoff investigation, Norquist was exposed for selling support from his front groups to corporations. In one damning e-mail, Norquist is promised $50,000 dollars in exchange for providing his Americans for Tax Reform support to one of Abramoff’s clients. Today, Norquist was not only parroting the PowerPoint talking points at the press conference, but he also brought in other key conservative movement leaders and Republican lawmakers to the event.
In addition to the front groups, the loudest voice against net neutrality is still Glenn Beck, who has smeared free Internet proponents as Marxists and Communists, and has adopted the attack that net neutrality constitutes a “government takeover.” However, it is important to realize that even Beck is being fed with opposition research dug up by operatives at Americans for Prosperity. This research document, compiled by Americans for Prosperity staffers, lays out point by point the attacks Beck has used in the past few weeks to disparage net neutrality supporters. If Beck picks up this new outreach to video game enthusiasts and the false comparison to Chinese censorship, then the impact of the “Net Brutality” PowerPoint will be even more apparent… [emphasis original]
Inserted from <Think Progress>
If you need a better understanding of why Net Neutrality is so important to keep, I explained it on May 6. Be sure of this. If the giant telecoms has an honest explanation for their position, they would not be planning a phony Chinese blog to deceive you. This is a fight we must win.
Corporations are NOT people! Money is NOT speech!
16 Responses to “Net-Neutrality: Dirty Tricks Planned in Secret!”
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Any ideas originating from the corps these days is all about them and their money. I wish people could see that.
Me too.
Grover Norquist is a deluded and thoroughly dishonest truth-twister. He and others on the far right and in the Chamber of Commerce business community are constantly putting the interests of the wealthy and the few before those of the working and the many. They ignore the fact that one person’s “free market” is most people’s economic bondage and slavery. As we are currently being strangled by corporatism, we must insist that the internet, already polluted enough with ads and commercial activity, remain as it is today: free from the control and direction of concentrated capital!
GOP-speak Dictionary
Free Market: the power to exploit.
Frankly I have become rather depressed about this Corporate Age we live in, the tentacles of the monsters are everywhere doing their best to create a world that would shock George Orwell.
Like all ages I know this one will end at some point but don’t see it coming anytime soon or how these parasites will finally be controlled.
Beach, what a great analogy!
When I first started demonstrating against the war in Vietnam, I did not see how we could end it. It took a long time, but we did.
When Crawford Caligula stole the 2000 election, I did not see how we could get him out of power. When he stole the 2004 election, I was almost ready to give up. It took eight years to win a majority in both houses and the Presidency.
That was the first step in defeating the corporations. The second step is exterminating (politically) the GOP alligators. The third is draining the Democratic Party swamp.
Years ago, as a blacklisted journalist–“the f*cking guy is crazy…A typewriter in his hands is a dangerous thing!”–Ifinally got onto a backwoods journal where I’d have enough power in the corners to say damn well what I please and get paid for it.
This was the early Seventies.
I’m sure there will be a way to elude PowerPoint as well.
But who writes on paper any more?
What’s paper? 😉
Net neutrality… another thing to be concerned about but I don’t see them succeeding because if the Internet is going to ‘pay to play’ all businesses will suffer and I can’t see them shooting themselves in the foot.
Karen, the threat is not that the net will go ‘play for pay’. The threat is that the coroprations will be able to conrtol what we see and hear online.
It’s not government control that people should worry about here, it’s corporate control and greed. And with all these fat cat wing-dingers you can bet there will be a lot of snooping going on.
Leslie, that’s exactly it. Hard core progressives will wait, but if undecided types have to wait twenty minutes for a progressive page to load, they will go elsewhere (to a corporate-approved infoganda source).
I think perhaps Norquist spent a wee bit too much time face down in a bathtub at some point in his life.
JR, I disagree. We would all be better off had he spent more time face down in a bathtub. 😉
Very interesting article (and shocking too). I hate being manipulated and dislike censorship which this is what it amounts to.
Diane, you’ve cut right to the chase. Manipulation and censorship is what it’s all about.