In a riveting article in The Nation Jeff Chester reveals the story behind the newly combined efforts of the major American Telcos to privatise the Internet.

Telcos like Comcast and Verizon, and others, have seen the amount of
traffic that relates to P2P. Now they are seeing the early vestiges of
traffic increases relating to video. They also see the vast wealth that
is being created by Yahoo! and Google. And they don't see why they
should allow their “pipes” to be used to allow others to build that
wealth. Nor do they see any value in allowing people to have access to
information. They are already doing deep packet sniffing of the
traffic, monitoring IP addresses etc so as to understand who is looking
at what. Next they are going to try to have the legislation relating to
communications changed to favour these moves. This sort of action is
not only happening in the US. The want to do away with network neutrality. And the only way to stop it is to find out more and to act.

If there is going to be a future for this planet it revolves around
communities – real and virtual – where ordinary people are informed
about those things that are going to affect our lives – and not just
thought of as another digit in a Total Addressable Market.

More information here and here

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Posted in Main Page by Chris Gilbey No Comments Yet