Net Neutrality

AT&T is apparently thinking about filtering out BitTorrent file transfers.

OK. Plain and simple: the internets are a threat to corporate control over the discourse in this country. With TV, our national discourse is controlled by GE, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and Rupert Murdoch. The internets are a threat to that control.

The U.S. media is really a sad state of affairs now. Even when the companies controlling the media aren't actively filtering content (which they almost certainly do) they emphasize tear-jerking, emotional stories over newsworthy ones. Read this piece by former Dateline NBC journalist John Hockenberry for some good insight into how things work.

As evidence of the media's performance, consider their miserable failure to counter the administrations' constant dishonest comingling of Iraq and 9/11. In early 2005, 64% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda and 46% believed that he helped plan 9/11. Look again at those percentages. That is a terrifying percentage of the country whose knowledge of the reasons we were fighting a war was demonstrably false.

We can't expect the media to reform itself. The only way to fix it is by 1) creating our own TV station that reports actual news, or 2) find a medium other than TV. The internets are that medium. I fully expect an all-out assault from the establishment media to kill, marginalize, obfuscate, and/or discredit internets-oriented media in the coming years. Net Neutrality is only the first phase of that attack. It is essential that our next President put this fire out.

For further reading on this subject, I highly recommend Al Gore's book An Assault on Reason. Gore has a very deep understanding of these issues and their implications. Just think where we'd be if the Presidency in this country was determined by who gets more votes instead of by arbitrary, partisan Supreme Court decisions...