the morals

Now, as you probably know, it isn't often that the Morals will abuse the impact they can have over young tastemakers by using their influence as a sort of musical/blogical soapbox for an overtly political cause. (The preceeding sentence, in addition to being a grammatical minefield, is not, strictly speaking, true.)

But, really, anything the Christian Coalition and MoveOn agree on is too crazy not to mention here.

Those of you who are tech-savvy (MumFORD!) already know this, but for the rest of you, listen up:

The big cable and telecom companies (read: AT&T, Comcast, etc), which have become the only ISPs in the market any more, want to be able to charge content providers for access to their customers. This would mean a huge company like Microsoft could buy access and would load at the speeds you are used to. Other content providers who can't or won't pony up -- news services like IMC, awesome web comix like Questionable Content, small businesses like Made Electric, or even web sites you absolutely cannot live without like craigslist, and yes, even pr0n -- will be relegated to a sort of e-ghetto of slow loading and poor connections. We cannot allow this to happen.

One of the things that has made the internet the (mostly) beautiful, democratic, and lively place that it is is the levelness of the playing field. With a bit of work, I can make a web page that looks just as good, or better, than, say Oregon Representative Greg Walden (incidentally, a major asshole who voted against Net Neutrality TWICE). I can register a domain name (like, say, www.gregwaldenisatotaldouche.com) for a few bucks and host my site for free or cheap hundreds of places. Or, now, I can host it from my home computer. The only difference, as things stand, between my page and Greg (douchebag) Walden's is contextual -- his page is, at first at least, more deeply embedded in the web as a whole. Other people link to his website, and thus it appears higher on search sites.

Letting the telecom companies take over would ruin democracy on the internet, and commodify what is becoming, sadly, the last bastion of truly free speech.

Don't let this happen

MoveOn has a Petition (which is probably largely ineffective), and a link to call your congresspeople (which is hella effective)

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