Monday, July 26, 2010

Big Companies' Ownership of the Internet and Net Neutrality

I was reading an email, I believe it was, a couple days ago, that AT&T (I believe) is supporting the monopolizing of Internet. In doing this it's going against the idea of net neutrality and therefore free access to internet sites. I don't remember all the details, but it basically said that communications companies such as AT&T want to start charging users for certain services and uses of Internet such as the amount of time they spend online in a similar way that they charge for the amount of time customers spend with long distance calls on a wired phone. This weakens the free access to information that the Constitution guarantees. It also lessons the flow of user traffic to authors' promotion of their work.

As I said, I don't remember the exact details, but here's a couple of articles that should give you a good idea of the issue:

http://www.freepress.net/press-release/2010/7/21/free-press-disappointed-fcc-decision-defend-discredited-media-ownership-rule

http://www.freepress.net/press-release/2010/7/22/free-press-responds-reports-t-mobile-abandoning-net-neutrality

I hope laws that allow such company ownership of the Internet won't go through. I would look the Free Press Website over to see how you can participate in preventing this sort of thing from happening. The "Save the Internet" project is a good example. They're at http://www.savetheinternet.com/