16Jul The Threat is Real Internet Freedom
How does this threat to Internet freedom affect you?
Such corporate control of the Web would reduce your choices and stifle the spread of innovative and independent ideas that we’ve come to expect online. It would throw the digital revolution into reverse. Internet gatekeepers are already discriminating against Web sites and services they don’t like:
- In May 2008, the Max Planck Institute released a comprehensive study that found both Comcast and Cox Communications to be deceptively blocking access to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.
- In October 2007, the Associated Press busted Comcast for blocking its users’ access to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like BitTorrent and Gnutella. This fraudulent practice is a glaring violation of Net Neutrality.
- In September 2007, Verizon was caught banning pro-choice text messages. After a New York Times expose, the phone company reversed its policy, claiming it was a glitch.
- In August 2007, AT&T censored a live webcast of a Pearl Jam concert just as lead singer Eddie Vedder criticized President Bush.
- In 2006, Time Warner’s AOL blocked all emails that mentioned www.dearaol.com — an advocacy campaign opposing the company’s pay-to-send e-mail scheme.
- In 2005, Canada’s telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a contentious labor dispute.
- In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.
- Shaw, a major Canadian cable, internet, and telephone service company, intentionally downgrades the “quality and reliability” of competing Internet-phone services that their customers might choose — driving customers to their own phone services not through better services, but by rigging the marketplace.
This is just the beginning. Cable and telco giants want to eliminate the Internet’s open road in favor of a tollway that protects their status quo while stifling new ideas and innovation.
What they’ve got planned - SAVE THE INTERNET
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