Blog Posts

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission offered no bonbons and forget-me-nots for AT&T this Valentine’s Day. On Tuesday, the SEC told AT&T and other telecoms that they must include a resolution supporting wireless Net Neutrality in annual shareholder ballots. The SEC found no merit in AT&T’s claim that such a resolution would “interfere with its network management practices and seriously impair its ability to provide wireless broadband service to its customers.”

Great news. Last night, thanks to the rapid response of Free Press activists, Arizona State University lifted its blocking of student access to Change.org.

We hope ASU understands that it must put the free speech rights of its students first. Free Press has asked the university to scrutinize its Internet-use policies to ensure they don’t compromise these online freedoms. 

People inside the D.C. bubble often tell stories about lavish fundraisers and the use of campaign cash to shore up votes in Congress. Conspiracy theories about who uses their PAC money, or direct contributions, to bend the ear of powerful committee chairmen and party leaders circulate throughout the capital faster than the Metro.

Still, the stories are usually hard to substantiate, and publicly members of Congress and their staffs are quick to deny that money has any influence at all. Rarely is the systemic corporate capture of Washington, D.C., on display in such a transparent and ugly way as it was last week.

Yesterday was unbelievable. In an unprecedented show of strength, millions of Internet users rose up against the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate’s Protect IP Act, with Wikipedia, reddit, Boing Boing, SavetheInternet.com and thousands of other sites going black to join in the protest (even Google hid its logo behind a black bar for the day). Millions sent letters to Congress, and tens of thousands picked up the phone to urge their senators to vote “no” on PIPA, which is scheduled for a Jan. 24 vote.