A Voice of Sanity on Net Neutrality

The other day in the latest issue of The Weekly Standard I saw an ad by a coalition that is for Net Neutrality: It's Our Net. "Senator, when you think of Net Neutrality, whose voices will you listen to?" Down one column: a whole long list of dozens of outfits and organizations. Down the other column: AT&T, BellSouth, Verizon.

The ad continues: "The huge phone companies are spending more than a hundred million dollars to convince Congress to let them control the Internet. Once they get their hands on it, there's no going back. Protect Internet freedom. Preserve the open Internet. Support Net Neutrality."

What a breath of fresh air, after some of the disingenuous magazine ads I've seen, which imply that letting the big telcos control the Internet would be a return to the status quo [sic]; or that not letting the big telcos control the Internet would be like remaining in the Middle Ages.

Yeah, right. The suits at some of the big telephone companies would just love to get their hands around the throat of the freest medium in the world. Me, as usual I'm not exactly interested in bowing down to the suits.