Posted on 03/14/2011 12:45:51 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Al Franken: ‘They're coming after the Internet’
By: Mike Zapler March 14, 2011 01:43 PM EDT
AUSTIN, Texas — Sen. Al Franken claimed Monday 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.
"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.”
Net neutrality, he added, is "the First Amendment issue of our time."
Receiving a hero's welcome from the liberal crowd, Franken took repeated shots at big telecoms, singling out Comcast.
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.
"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."
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Comcast isn’t restricting anyone or anything, but you have Netflix making millions of dollars while Comcast [and other cable companies] foot the bill...
If comcast charges Netflix more money for the brandwidth that THEIR customers use, they will increase the monthly charge to THEIR customers and those who are not using all of the additional bandwidth will not have to carry the costs...
Precisely. Millions of Americans live where there's a single choice for broadband internet: a gov't-granted monopoly cable company.
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