Gun owners, librarians unite against Bells…
April 24th, 2006 by Matt StollerFrom Telephony online:
A diverse and perhaps unlikely group of political activists and associations assembled today to voice opposition to a U.S. House bill that it says would impede InterNet innovation by undermining network neutrality.The “SavetheInterNet.com Coalition” includes InterNet pioneer and Google executive Vint Cerf, Gun Owners of America, political action group Moveon.org, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Consumer Federation of America, American Library Association and others.
The group pointed to its own diversity–uniting such disparate interests as Gun Owners of America and Afro-Netizen.com, an online African American community group–as evidence of the righteousness of its cause as well as the range of stakeholders in Net neutrality.
“Whenever you see people on the far left and the far right getting together [to oppose the same bill],” said Craig Fields, director of InterNet operations for conservative gun advocacy group Gun Owners of America, it’s a good indication that, “what Congress is getting ready to do is un-American.”
“If the major telecoms think they can taint or characterize opposition to what is a power grab on their part as liberal or an anti-free market approach, they’re mistaken,” he said.
