Christ, What an Asshole - Net Neutrality Edition
Published by BG on Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 8:33 AM.Save the Internet Blog » Blog Archive » Bush Official in ‘Shouting Match’ with Open Access Supporters
The Bush administration’s top telecommunications official reportedly tried to “shout down” Net Neutrality and open access supporters after they called him out for spinning America’s Internet market as a wonderland of competition and consumer choice.
John Kneuer, assistant secretary of commerce and head of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), “quickly lost his temper and began shouting” after an audience of technology experts pressed him to explain how the U.S. had fallen so far behind other developed countries in providing Internet access to citizens.
According to The Register on Friday, Kneuer claimed that free market competition was the reason for the Internet’s “great success,” dismissing the history of Net Neutrality protections that have fostered new innovations and public participation online.
Real Free Markets vs. Telco Control
Kneuer, who previously served as a top phone company lobbyist for Washington law firm Piper Rudnick, told the audience that the “free market” (by which he means the current duopoly of large phone and cable companies) should be unencumbered by consumer protections and basic Internet freedoms.
What the motherfuckityfuck are we doing handing top jobs in the Commerce Department to industry lobbyists? Of course he's going to push for the preservation of the (cough) "competitive" environment the big Telcos have operated in, and of course he's going to claim that "the free markets" allow consumers to make the choices that foster "new innovations and public participation online."
If, of course by "free market" he means "take what Comcast offers or suck it," and by "new innovations" he means "squeezing so-called 'public participation online' into the channels that allow big Telcos to profiteer at the expense of more agile business models that could thrive, but for not paying the extortion fees for access to the Telco-captured marketplace."
Or something like that. Christ, what an asshole.
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