{"id":10837,"date":"2011-03-21T00:00:17","date_gmt":"2011-03-20T23:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=10837"},"modified":"2011-03-16T17:00:41","modified_gmt":"2011-03-16T16:00:41","slug":"al-franken-%e2%80%98theyre-coming-after-the-internet%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/03\/al-franken-%e2%80%98theyre-coming-after-the-internet%e2%80%99\/","title":{"rendered":"Al Franken: \u2018They’re coming after the Internet\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

US Sen. Al Franken<\/a> claimed Monday [14 Mar 2011] that big corporations are “hoping to destroy” the Internet and issued a call to arms to several hundred tech-savvy South by Southwest attendees to preserve net neutrality.<\/p>\n

“I came here to warn you, the party may be over,” Franken said. “They’re coming after the Internet hoping to destroy the very thing that makes it such an important [medium] for independent artists and entrepreneurs: its openness and freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Net neutrality, he added, is “the First Amendment issue of our time.”<\/p>\n

Receiving a hero’s welcome from the liberal crowd, Franken took repeated shots at big telecoms, singling out Comcast.<\/p>\n

He said Comcast is looking to change the basic architecture of the Web by implementing a pricing scheme that allows moneyed interests to pay for faster speeds, leaving everyone else behind. That would be a particularly bad development for the independent musicians and artists gathered here, he said.<\/p>\n

“The real end for Comcast is to put Netflix out of business entirely,” Franken said, because of the threat that Netflix’s streaming video business could pose to Comcast’s cable franchise. “In the end, the American people will end up paying a lot more for worse service.”<\/p>\n

Comcast is now embroiled in a dispute with Level 3<\/a>, a networking company that carries online video feeds for Netflix, over fees Comcast wants to charge to carry the high-bandwidth content.<\/p>\n

In response to Franken\u2019s comments, a Comcast spokeswoman said Monday that the dispute with Level 3 isn\u2019t about net neutrality<\/a> but is \u201ca peering issue.\u201d \u201cUnder the FCC order for the Comcast NBCU transaction, Comcast is required to comply with the FCC\u2019s recent open Internet rules even if they are overturned in court. Our customers can access all Netflix content,\u201d said Sena Fitzmaurice, Comcast\u2019s vice president of government communications.<\/p>\n

Franken, who was an aggressive opponent of the Comcast acquisition of NBC Universal, implored SXSW attendees to fight the political influence of the big telecom firms.<\/p>\n

“Unfortunately one thing these big corporations have that we don’t is the ability to purchase favorable political outcomes,” he said. “Big telecoms have lots of [lobbyists], and good ones, too. … The end of net neutrality would benefit no one but these corporate giants.”<\/p>\n

Franken said talk of a “government takeover” of the Internet<\/a> by net neutrality critics has as much credibility as claims of “death panels” in the health care legislation and claims that “Obama’s a Muslim,” calling them a “pantheon of lies.”<\/p>\n

Franken finished up his half-hour speech by imploring the crowd to preserve net neutrality<\/a> to avoid a future in which they’re “stuck listening to the Black Eyed Peas and reminiscing about the days before you had to sell out to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet’s not let the government sell us out,\u201d he said. \u201cLet’s fight for net neutrality. Let’s keep Austin weird. Let’s keep the Internet weird. Let’s keep the Internet free.”<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 politico.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Sen. Al Franken claimed Monday [14 Mar 2011] that big corporations are “hoping to destroy” the Internet and said Comcast is looking to change the basic architecture of the Web by implementing a pricing scheme that allows moneyed interests to pay for faster speeds, leaving everyone else behind\u2026 “Unfortunately one thing these big corporations have that we don’t is the ability to purchase favorable political outcomes,” he said. “Big telecoms have lots of [lobbyists], and good ones, too. … The end of net neutrality would benefit no one but these corporate giants.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}