The Web's inventor slams the telco lies

By Donnell Alexander
Posted on June 22, 2006, Printed on February 13, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/38024/the_web%27s_inventor_slams_the_telco_lies

Last month, the man that created the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, gave the most eloquent and poignant defense of Internet freedom to date-- you can read it in full here. This month, with things not getting terribly better on the Net Neutrality front, he's posted again and upped the stakes a bit. It's clear and to the point, and demonstrates so symbolically where the power to sway the government currently lies:

Control of information is hugely powerful. In the US, the threat is that companies control what I can access for commercial reasons. (In China, control is by the government for political reasons.) There is a very strong short-term incentive for a company to grab control of TV distribution over the Internet even though it is against the long-term interests of the industry.

Yes, regulation to keep the Internet open is regulation. And mostly, the Internet thrives on lack of regulation. But some basic values have to be preserved. For example, the market system depends on the rule that you can't photocopy money. Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it. (emphasis mine)

Let's see whether the United States is capable as acting according to its important values, or whether it is, as so many people are saying, run by the misguided short-term interested of large corporations.

Deanna Zandt is a contributing editor at AlterNet.

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