No one, other than the big telcos, seems to be particularly happy with the FCC's Net Neutrality rules, as Chris documented earlier. But it's important to be clear about what it is exactly the Right is doing on this one. It's death panels all over again.
Kevin Drum writes about an e-mail conversation he had with a "conservative reader who is absolutely convinced that this is an effort by Democrats to rid the internet of conservative voices."
[T]his is nuts. The whole point of net neutrality is just the opposite: it would continue to allow internet providers to discriminate on the basis of volume but not on content. So if you're a heavy internet user and have a lot of bits streaming through your pipe, they can charge you more. But that's it. They can't charge either content providers or you based on what you say or who you are. It's hard to think of anything that should assuage conservative concerns more. And yet, somehow this has become the latest grand conspiracy theory. It's craziness.
Yes, it's craziness, but it's calculated craziness. Remember back in the early days, under a Republican administration, the coalition supporting Net Neutrality spanned the political spectrum, from the Gun Owners of American and Christian Coalition to the ACLU and all points in between. Republican members of Congress and ConservaDems were opposed, but that was typical--they were protecting the telcos that own them. And now they're doing the same, just as they did in the health care debate, spreading the lie that Net Neutrality is a government take-over of the Internet. ThinkProgress has this video compilation of the "scary government taking over" narrative.
Never mind that true Net Neutrality is the most important protection from any kind of censorship or control of the Internet, and that if anything this ruling by the FCC gives Comcast, AT&T, Verizon et al. far more control than the government over Internet content, particularly on mobile devices.
Like I said, it's healthcare reform all over again, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the government take-over talking points that have emerged on the Right are coming straight from the telcos, just like the government take-over talking point on the public option came directly from the insurance industry.
Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/A_Wo81vpd6E/-The-Rights-war-on-Net-Neutrality
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