Saturday, May 13, 2006

The Telecom Industry and its Pimps

Mike McCurry (former Clinton press secretary ) is the chairman of the "Hands Off the Internet" a group financed by AT&T and BellSouth among others. Dan Mitchell at the NYTimes summarizes a recent comment by Mr. McCurry-the-favor-of-big-business at the Huffington Post as: "the telecomm industry just wants the Net to be governed by economics not government regulation."

Ah yes, a sentiment often echoed by every industry that likes getting government tax breaks, subsidies, and the benefits of publically funded basic research. The same industries that hate any form of government regulation.

Of course AT&T wants the Net to be governed by economics. If the Net is governed by economics, the wealthiest players get to call the shots. In this case that would be AT&T and BellSouth and Verizon.

The same companies who have been turning our phone records over to the NSA without so much as a by the way to us, the customers they supposedly serve.

"Hands off the Internet" is another of those political campaign the professes to do the opposite of what it intends like the "Clear Skies Act". It could be renamed the "Hand the Internet to the Telecomm Industry on a Silver Platter and kiss it goodbye."

2 comments:

Lever said...

Oh no, not more of that bullcr@p >:|

Steve Milloy does that with his junkscience site and his involvement with the "Coallition for the Advancement of Sound Science" or whatever they're called... there's an article on his site denying passive smoking links with cancer and yet Milloy is known to be funded by Philip Morris !!! Wait, he's linked with Monsanto too, genetic engineers of modern day foodstuffs and onetime makers of Agent Orange...

OK, who's gonna start "Hands off our hands off our Internet"??

ergo said...

I've been hearing the expression "astroturf" used to describe these corporately funded "grassroots" organizations.

This Milloy guy sounds like a mean slimy peach. He should at the very lest apologise for insulting that poor dead scientist.