Entering the corridors of power to make your case may involve a little compromise of your principles, but that's all part of growing up.

Quote:
Если во имя идеала человеку приходится делать подлости, то цена этому идеалу — дерьмо.
End quote (Strugackie, Predatory Things of Our Time)

Translation: If someone has to commit base acts for the sake of an ideal, then that ideal isn't worth a damn.

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There are NO BORDERS with the Internet and Big Brother will never be able to control the free flow of ideas of we the people who exercise our INALIENABLE HUMAN RIGHTS of thought, conscience and speech.

Although the USA media ignores the historic FREEDOM OF SPEECH TRIAL in a Mid East democracy that USA taxpayers provide 3 billion dollars a year to
WAWA is reporting.

Catch up:
Freedom of Speech trial of Mordechai Vanunu in Israel
Feb 18, 2006
WAWA BLOG:
http://www.wearewideawake.org

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Global Internet Freedom Task Force = World Governments United Against the People.

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I agree with what I believe these types of articles are trying to say, namely, that governments and network providers (e.g. ISP's, telco's) should not be able to censor specific Internet content or charge different rates depending on content. But in this article and others I've seen on the topic, there is some sloppy language.

(1) The internet is not free or "zero cost," although it is very low-cost. As a network administrator I can tell you there are all sorts of costs that go into providing you with the Internet. By going around saying "the internet should be free" in response to, for example, the telcos' desire to charge more for certain content, we are making ourselves look stupid. Everybody will say "geez, it costs money to run a network, why shouldn't AT&T charge Google for access to potential customers?" What we SHOULD be pointing out is that AT&T, or whichever telco you name, is ALREADY charging Google probably quite a bit for line access charges on very-high-bandwidth circuits. If they feel they aren't charging enough, they should just raise their rates, but the government is well within its rights to enforce "network neutrality" which is a situation in which you can only charge based on the quantity of data (bandwidth, which ISP's already use as a basis for charging business customers) not its content or destination.

When we say we want it to be "free" or "zero-cost" (or for that matter, fail to be extra-clear when "free" means "free speech" instead of "free beer"), we come off looking like kids who have never worked for a living. People will laugh at us.

As a related point, some have gotten annoyed that telco's want to charge more for video or audio than for older Web technologies. Well, video and audio require more bandwidth which means fewer signals can be carried on any given copper or fiber-optic wire. As a customer I love any situation where I can get a flat monthly fee for something I use a lot of, but it is well within a provider's rights to meter their product according to the quantity provided. Should we protest that local grocers are charging us twice as much for two dozen eggs as for one dozen? Again, we need to distinguish this from charging based on content.

(2) Bits and bytes are not the means of production. Yes, many of us in America, including me, make a living using data and "knowledge" but not by engaging in material manufacturing ourselves. But we Americans are still physical beings, and the things that create our "economic standard of living" are still physical. They just aren't made HERE. Everyone from the far right to the far left is in denial about this fact-- we have not "outgrown" industrialism, we have decided it is dirty and our supervisors have decided that American workers cost too much as factory operatives, so they have moved the factories overseas. But they still exist, still pollute (we just don't have to see it in our neighborhoods) and despite many advances in per-worker productivity and automation, there are still a lot of people making stuff in the world.

This latter denial of physical reality affects how we debate all sorts of political issues whether it is economic or industrial policy, poverty, or whatever. How many "liberals" still believe that poverty is a result of Lack of Equal Education alone? Mind you, education IS unequal and people of all classes and races DO deserve an equal shot at the few high-paying jobs. But poverty will not be eliminated if we create such equal opportunity, excellent as that would be. We would just have more white faces at Taco Bell and Merry Maids, because the fact would remain that there is a greater need for clean offices and fast food than for lawyers or high-end computer programs. Eliminating poverty requires higher wages which requires lower rates of return on investments or higher prices. Simple, yet, who wants to hear it?

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Soapbox time, folks. Look. everybody in America knows that the FCC laws are made in Washington, D.C. in the United States Congress. Also, after Abramoff, everybody knows some members of the United States Congress vote according to the highest bidder, ergo which ever lobbists have the money to buy those votes. Sad, but true. This applies to Demo-rats and Repugnicans. Sorry, folks, high ideas like Democracy are great but they don't hold a candle to a trip to the Bahamas.
Now, doesn't it stand to reason that Corporations like ATT, Verizon, etc. want more bang for their buck wherever they can get it? If you're on dial-up, like some of us old fossils are out here, ATT constantly bombard you with offers of broadband access. And, if you don't snap up this once in a life time offer, some CEO isn't going to get his Christmas bonus or the toys his spoiled brat wants for Christmas. Couple that with the fact that some high dollar politicians are getting stung by some bloggers exposing his underhanded, dollar for votes dealing with the public trust and you have a situation where
control of the internet is a very desirable thing.
Now, I'm sure Metallica were very sincere about screaming that they needed a few more millions that were syphoned off by Napster. But this is a totally different issue. A lot of people in America, both pro and con, get their news off the internet that the mainstream media won't touch for fear of pissing off the powers that (at the moment) be. If you give this Congress the ability to limit your access to such information, they WILL blind you in whatever way they can to such information. We're down to the nut cutting on this issue and if you stand down without a fight over this, they WILL blind you.
The question to ask yoursef is: Do you want Fox News, CNN, or any of the other bought and sold institutions of the
so-called media to be your ONLY source of information or do you stand up for the last place where you can say what you want, whatever it may be? Please don't give up you last bastion of free speech. Go to Commoncause.org and sign the petition to keep the internet available to everybody regardless of race, religious belief or nationality. Thank you for your time.

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...all of the time by the government and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

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The right to communicate with eachother is a right given us by birth. It is the very foundation of the building of a society. The Internet Sociert is no different than the Human one. Limit the means of sharing information in either and you're asking for rebellion of the masses.
Throughout history it has been the controlling of information that has led to the calamities of Humankind. Everytime the Bible was 'edited' many died horrible deaths. Insane tortures were levied as Papal edicts changed on wish and whim.
America claims it won WW2 based on it's ability to keep secrets. The with-holding of information or the exposure of only segments of it to a vast network has many problems.
When people believe their job is a peaceful teacher on aneducational mission in a foriegn land and suddenly you're in the middle of an International spying operation,you've been denied critical need to know information about just what kind of outreach operation you've signed up to. So much for the Peace Corps.
The point is our Liberty and the the Liberty of all people on this planet are under attack. Our Freedom has been rested from us by corrupted individuals with the control of every living thing and it's resources as their goal. The monetary system is their tool,the military and police are their 'enforcers'. We all have to stand against these forces. There are people right now being forced to read you email,listen to your phones,screen all your contacts, and they'd rather be fishing or one of a million other things. But they are 'under orders'. We have oeders that supercide theirs.
It's called the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and they say whenever Freedom and Liberty are threatened,no matter if the enemy is outside the Country or sitting in the Whitehouse,We have the Right to remove them. We have the Right to stand against any intent to restrict our Liberties and Fredoms, either as a People,or on the Web.
We have the ability to end this nightmare of endless control,right now today. Everyone everywhere is fed up with the mess we've been forced to swallow. Workers,Teachers,Businessfolks,and yes even the folks in Politics,Lawenforcement and the Military,ALL know when they see Freedom and Liberty being stolen.
We must give the enemies of Freedom and Liberty the vote of 'non-support'. Do nothing they say,follow no orders,question all authority. Refuse to kill. Refuse to censor.
Refuse to keep secrets. Refuse to deny access.Refuse the
System. Then we keep our Liberty. We retain our Freedom.
The Tyrants die without us having to kill them.

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The free flow of information is critical for the health of democratic institutions - such as the US university system. However, the restriction of open discussion of scientific results has been going on for some time and is now being ramped up to new heights. If you aren't familiar with Bayh-Dole, the 1980 law that allowed universities to create exclusive patents based on publicly-funded research, you should look it up. While this appears to apply only to scientific areas such as microelectronics and pharmaceuticals, the result has been that all areas of science are under attack by high-level administrators hired out of large corporate businesses. Climate science is an important example; witness the recent effort to silence James Hansen at NASA by a 24-year old apparatchik. Renewable energy research is even under greater assault; Bush's comments in his State of the Union address were simply a blatant lie to the US public. We can also add biased and dishonest drug research on behalf of pharmaceutical companies to this list.

Corporate business interests want to 'externalize the costs' of R&D departments, and the goal is to use our public universities for this purpose. Shamefully, scientists in the upper administration of academia are going along with this approach, perhaps out of fear for their jobs - which is the primary threat used by the government to force compliance with this approach. The free flow of information and open discussion of scientific results are important not just for quality science, but also for the public's right for access to unbiased information. Repeal of Bayh-Dole is one way to do this, but it does require 'entering the corridors of power'. However, I see no need to compromise essential scientific or personal principles in order to do this - in fact, the opposite is true.

Our scientific system was originally set up with federal funding agencies such as NSF and NIH in order to shield scientific research from political interference by whatever political group happened to hold power that day - a good example of our system of checks and balances. To quote David Baltimore, science is now under attack by a 'unitary executive' who is undermining the most basic principles of our democratic system.

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OK I just thought I would give a short summary of what actually "makes" the internet tick (besides long hours of administration)

Each user of an ISP is identified with an IP Address.
When you type a web address like google.com your computer sends a signal to your ISP, that has connections to other ISPs, and Dynamic Name Servers. DNS's will then take your request and forward you to the proper IP Address on the 'Internet' that is registered with the domain name you requested. This simply allows you to remember human readable identifications for the servers you are connecting to, downloading from, etc. The problem is that there is no 'Internet' its a vast multi connection of computers connected, and forwarded, routed to their destinations so to speak. The US Government does however own control over all DNS operations (domain name registration, etc) so when the global Dynamic Name Servers sync off eachother, and the 'Main Servers' just create the rules for the sync.

The biggest problem is that anyone can setup a DNS server, the 'main servers' just route all the mini DNS to the main DNS and vice versa, so the collapse of the global network is upon us when people are sick of going by the USA Rules, because the hardware can stay the same... its all software! :)

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We truly only have freedoms when we are actively exercising them


Democracies only flourish when we the people are vigilent and hold our 'leaders' accountable

When the Fourth Estate fails to report the whole truth and all the facts on the ground

We who are wide awake will do it until they begin

Reporting live from Palestine once again March 11-27, 2006

first report on the WAWA Blog Dec. 20, 2005-Jan. 6, 2006

catch up on Vanunu's FREEDOM OF SPEECH trial in Jerusalem Feb. 18, 2006 WAWA BLOG:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/

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