“For a brief period last week, the Chinese government hijacked foreign search engines. Chinese Internet users trying to search on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were redirected . . . . . to the Chinese search engine Baidu. Democratic governments understand the connection between human rights and Internet freedom. They have been quick to condemn the Internet crackdown in Burma and China and the lack of Internet freedom in much of the world”.

“But at the same time, democratic countries are themselves increasingly turning to content blocking and online surveillance to address terrorism and other perceived dangers at home. In doing so, they are in danger of sacrificing their moral authority to ensure that the global Internet moves toward greater freedom”.

“In Germany, there is an uproar about a proposal to give the government powers to spy virtually, using e-mails infected with spy ware”.

They are gatekeepers today, but tyrants tomorrow. We have to be alert to the dangers ahead. Stay alert.

This is just like Bush claiming that waterboarding isn’t torture if it’s “classified”. Should we have Net Neutrality laws on the books? Why? Because we state in the law what we WANT. We say “it will NEVER BE LEGAL to balkanize the internet” - we don’t have to wait for the first CRIME to know we need a LAW.

Free-market ideologues can stay married to the likes of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. For my part I say: we, the people, deserve better and we deserve it now. See http://communityfiber.org for a model for a Community owned-and-operated Fiber To The Home network - get a ONE GIGABIT connection at your home and business at standard utility rates, all vendors to users on the network compete on a level playing field, there CANNOT be a threat to network neutrality once we own our own network, and users will save up to $1000 per year EACH over telco/cableco costs.

Let’s quit worrying what the SCUMBAGS want to do and instead BUILD OUR OWN NETWORK AROUND THEM. And put them out of business, as they deserve. Service, my a**. A DSL user in the Central Valley (e.g. Manteca) will wait UP TO ONE AND THREE-QUARTER HOURS ON MUZAK HOLD to report a problem with their line. We could be getting ONE GIGABIT on fiber but Verizon is selling DSL speeds on Fiber! AT&T wants to do fiber to the NODE and then use COPPER to get to you, capping you at 55 megabits (VDSL.)

Tell them: We’re going to BUILD OUR OWN FIBER NETWORK and then you fellas can TAKE A LONG WALK ON A SHORT PIER.

They can balkanize their remaining eight customers at will, then.

I do not think that Washington gets it. Bloggers will not allow Washington’s finest goof balls to block access to the Internet. Save the Internet is an important topic, but Washington’s finest have not figured this out. Bloggers and Internet based citizen journalists are on the march to protect our freedom of speech in this new dynamic medium called the blogosphere.