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Saturday, April 21, 2007

Is Internet 2 a scam to kill net neutrality and tame the Wild Wild Web?

Read much of the computer media and the prosody about Internet 2 is decidedly purplish and positive. New bandwidth! Ultra speed! But is there a dark side to the architecture of a new Internet that cuts right to the heart of the executive branch's wet dream of total control over everything that we do (and corporate America's desire to make us pay for the privilege)?

Read this article by Steve Watson at Global Research and decide for yourself.

Here is a sample of the just the sort of controls envsioned for a "new, improved Internet:"

  • In a display of bi-partisanship, there have recently been calls for all out mandatory ISP snooping on all US citizens by both Democrats and Republicans alike.
  • Republican Senator John McCain recently tabled a proposal to introduce legislation that would fine blogs up to $300,000 for offensive statements, photos and videos posted by visitors on comment boards. It is well known that McCain has a distaste for his blogosphere critics, causing a definite conflict of interest where any proposal to restrict blogs on his part is concerned.
  • During an appearance with his wife Barbara on Fox News last November, George Bush senior slammed Internet bloggers for creating an "adversarial and ugly climate."
  • The White House's own recently de-classified strategy for "winning the war on terror" targets Internet conspiracy theories as a recruiting ground for terrorists and threatens to "diminish" their influence.
  • The Pentagon recently announced its effort to infiltrate the Internet and propagandize for the war on terror.
  • In a speech last October, Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff identified the web as a "terror training camp," through which "disaffected people living in the United States" are developing "radical ideologies and potentially violent skills." His solution is "intelligence fusion centers," staffed by Homeland Security personnel which will go into operation next year.
  • The U.S. Government wants to force bloggers and online grassroots activists to register and regularly report their activities to Congress. Criminal charges including a possible jail term of up to one year could be the punishment for non-compliance.
  • A landmark legal case on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America and other global trade organizations seeks to criminalize all Internet file sharing of any kind as copyright infringement, effectively shutting down the world wide web - and their argument is supported by the U.S. government.
  • A landmark legal ruling in Sydney goes further than ever before in setting the trap door for the destruction of the Internet as we know it and the end of alternative news websites and blogs by creating the precedent that simply linking to other websites is breach of copyright and piracy.
  • The European Union, led by former Stalinist and potential future British Prime Minister John Reid, has also vowed to shut down "terrorists" who use the Internet to spread propaganda.
  • The EU data retention bill, passed last year after much controversy and with implementation tabled for late 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months. Under this law, investigators in any EU country, and most bizarrely even in the US, can access EU citizens' data on phone calls, sms', emails and instant messaging services.
  • The EU also recently proposed legislation that would prevent users from uploading any form of video without a license.
  • The US government is also funding research into social networking sites and how to gather and store personal data published on them, according to the New Scientist magazine. "At the same time, US lawmakers are attempting to force the social networking sites themselves to control the amount and kind of information that people, particularly children, can put on the sites."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Greetings! I will tell you that net neutrality will be the culprit that kills web 2.0. Well it won't really kill it but it will put everyone in the slow lane. The UK's The Register illustrates this here.

It's great to see your concern and we at the Hands Off the Internet Coalition want to make sure our internet is up to date and accessible by all.

Avram Mirsky said...

"Hands Off the Internet" is a pseudo-independent organization whose members include all of the big telecoms and other corporate interests vested in seeing an end to net neutality. Nice try, dude.