Net Neutrality - Hoby to US Congress

I'd like to talk to you a bit about why Diverse Media Ownership and Net Neutrality are so important to a free society and a democratic republic. Without legislation and legal rulings in favor of these issues, the foundations our country is built upon may be swept out from under us - dropping us all into a very dark future.

Democracy needs a free and diverse flow of information to remain functional. When running for public office, you need to be able to get your campaign out for the voters to make informed decisions. And when in office, we need to be able to send our concerns to you in Congress.

Media Consolidation makes both of these scenarios difficult to impossible for most Americans via television and radio - mainly through charging exorbitant rates for airing even the shortest messages. On top of this, media broadcasters even refuse to air programming arbitrarily - regardless of the public good any given program may contain. Free speech and democratic candidacy suffers horribly as a result.

And this is the model that the Telecom companies want to remake the Internet in the image of - a virtual landscape of high speed restriction, censorship, and corporate abuse.. and Internet that excludes the public from direct participation, turning the bi-directional information flow, where anyone now can be a creator of internet media - into a closed, mostly one-directional broadcast system.. yet another vehicle of corporate fascism to maximize profit.

In the Internet of Comcast's, AT&T's, Verizon's future vision - this very message I'm making to you would be impossible. It would either be blocked outright or would be so expensive to send that I'd never be able to afford it.. or both. I hope you understand how this world without media diversity and net neutrality is a direct and hostile threat to free and democratic society.. because it most certainly IS.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• free speech
• democracy
• republic
• internet
• broadcast
• media
• net neutrality
• diversity
• consolidation
• localism

[sagecast]

Nice work!