Americans for Tax Reform and other conservative "astroturf" groups have formed a coalition to stop any legislation to preserve net neutrality. The new group is called -- get this! -- the Internet Freedom Coalition. These guys just love deceptive nomenclature...
As you will recall, "net neutraility" means that small web pages, like this one, load up just as rapidly as do pages put together by big companies. That's the way things work now; that's the system most of us would like to see preserved. The Republicans want to allow the big broadband carriers to charge for faster loading. This plan will amount to an extra "tax" paid to the big corporations. Smaller sites which do not pay the tax will saunter onto your screen with all the agility of a drunken tortoise.
So how does the Internet Freedom Coalition try to spin the current system as a bad thing? They will try to convince the public that a bill to preserve net neutrality would be "the first major attempt by Washington to regulate the Internet." Actually, "net neutrality" means keeping the net the way it is.
The coalition will also take out banner ads proclaiming net neutrality to be a "tax on the internet." Actually, it is the anti-neutrality big carriers who want to collect an extra "tax" from humble bloggers like yours truly.
How can the bastards lie like that? They've twisted the truth a full 180 degrees!
If we do not preserve net neutrality, thousands of bloggers -- including yours truly -- may well have to give up. Small businesses won't stand a chance against the big companies. Forget about downloading freeware and shareware. Ewido and AVG make invaluable free anti-virus products; will they continue to be useful if updates dribble onto your system bit by bit?
In the right-hand column of this page, you will find an ad proclaiming that "The Internet is under attack!" I created it; the link goes to the fine "Save the Internet" site. If you have a web page or blog, feel free to use that ad. (You'll find the code under "Page Source.") Do whatever you can to combat the deceptive advertising which will soon dance across many a web page.
1 comment:
Conservetive bloggers like those at Pajamas Media and LGF don't care about such a thing as a tax on the internet because they have sugar daddies providing for their wing-nut welfare, and what daddy wants, daddy gets.
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