Checking out the link to The Nation in Mason’s excellent post below, I noticed an ad promising to show me the future of the Internet. So I clicked, and got a lobby site for a group called Hands Off The Internet. I watched their little animation, which makes some clear and easy delineations between good guys and bad guys as we all move forward in building the Internet.
Clear and easy, but accurate? I have no idea.
Clue number one that I might not agree with these people: they make fun of my beloved country. Referring to Canada to make a point, the narrator audibly sneers, and the animation shows a Mountie atop a moose.The Mountie sings a bit of the national anthem and then some cartoon hearts appear, apparently to suggest our proud Mountie and his moose are more than just friends.
I have to say, I haven’t a clue about “net neutrality” — the issue at hand — or any reasons to either love it or hate it, beyond this group’s insistence that Canada is somehow diabolically involved and large corporations want net neutrality while consumers may not.
Check them out here:
http://www.dontregulate.org/
Some of the sponsor groups under the Hands Off umbrella:
The American Conservative Union
AT&T (hmmm, aren’t they a large corporation?)
Center for Individual Freedom
Cingular
You see, this is exactly why I immediately distrust arguments that lean on the “we all know large corporations are evil” pillar of lefty thought.