Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens Is Going To Kill The Internet......What are you goin

[Guest guest]

" Lori R. Price " <lrprice

Sun, 9 Jul 2006 18:26:51 -0400

Fw: Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens Is Going To Kill The Internet...

 

FYI.

 

 

 

-

Corvus Films

TruePatriotsUnite

Sunday, July 09, 2006 6:08 PM

Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens Is Going To Kill The

Internet......What are you going to do about it?

 

Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens Is Going To Kill The Internet As We Once

Knew It

 

.......What are you going to do about it?

 

Stupid Is As Stupid Does... AND IT'S GOING TO HURT US ALL

http://www.mytown.ca/harlan/149/

By Harlan Bennett

9 July 2006

The Honorable Ted Stevens <Call This Basturd and Tell Him To Keep His

Grimy Hands Off The Internet

United States Senate

522 Hart Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20510

Please go to the trouble to call his offices AND fill out his goddamn

email form and tell him HANDS OFF!

http://stevens.senate.gov/contact.cfm

(202) 224-3004 <--Call This Basturd and Tell Him To Keep His Grimy

Hands Off The Internet

(202) 224-2354 FAX

 

Oh, Ted Stevens. The poor guy just doesn't get it.

 

Just in case nobody outside of the frozen tundra of Alaska hasn't

heard of this guy: Ted is the bushy-bearded Alaskan senator best known

for the innovative " bridge to nowhere, " as Washingtonians have dubbed

it, as well as the other hundreds of millions of wasted dollars in pet

projects scattered around his state that bear his wife's name and

serve nothing more than a small herd of moose. Well, dear readers,

SOMEHOW, nobody seems to know (or rather, will admit to knowing) just

HOW, Ted Stevens ended up in charge of the Senate Commerce Committee.

Now he's using that position to push a new telecommunications bill

that would basically castrate the Internet, cripple e-commerce, and

give companies like Verizon and AT & T an unholy amount of power over

your browsing. That's not even the scary part. The really frightening

bit is realizing exactly how far Ted Stevens' understanding of the

Internet goes.

 

Here is a direct quote from Senator Ted " IT DOES WHAT? " Stevens: " I

just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock

in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? " GOSH, how

eloquent. He continued, " Because it got tangled up with all these

things going on the internet commercially. So you want to talk about

the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to

communicate and we aren't using it for any commercial purposes. " And

finally, Stevens said, " And again, the internet is not something you

just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. "

Tubes? Like what the bank sucks up from the drive-in bank?

 

Yes, dear readers, THIS is the man spearheading an important

telecommunications bill that will have serious implications for us

all. And yes, he does understand the bill - and the nature of the

Internet - about as well as a hamster understands the theory of

relativity.

 

Gosh, this fool is so stupid that I don't even know where to start

talking about it. First, the man is the head of the Commerce Committee

and he's claiming that nobody uses the Internet for commerce? I bet

Amazon would take issue with that, Ted. I was under the impression the

growing piles of money headed toward e-commerce was a good thing, both

for the consumer and for the companies that stayed ahead of the curve.

Apparently Ted doesn't think we have any business buying goods online.

 

That's not a shock, considering he also doesn't understand the

difference between e-mail and the Internet. He seems to think they're

one and the same. In fact, he seems so sure that the only reasonable

function of the Internet is to send e-mail, that he's gotten rid of

the latter term entirely and replaced it with the former. DEAR Ted,

you asinine mouth-breather, there are a wealth of other uses for the

Internet. I'm not even going to waste my time trying to explain them

all. Here we are, in the 21st century, and we still have to explain to

the policymakers that the Internet has many uses beyond e-mail. This

is a sad, sad state of affairs.

 

What's even sadder is that the policymakers, such as Ted Stevens, are

using their complete lack of understanding of the Internet to push a

bill that would essentially destroy the Internet as we know it.

 

Under the bill, the Internet would be split into several parts, or

tiers of service. These tiers would essentially be regulated by the

telecoms, which could decide what is and isn't allowed. If Verizon

doesn't want people going to iTunes, it could refuse to direct people

to the iTunes site. When people tried to go there, it would take them

to whatever site Verizon preferred, say Napster. Basically, it would

let the telecoms decide what sites they wanted you to be able to

access, and let them cripple the rest. Free services like YouTube

would basically die. New Web-based businesses would have a huge

mountain to climb just to get started. And the telecoms would get

richer than ever, getting to tax every single page click and

transaction on the web while collecting massive payoffs from those

companies that want to be " preferred " sites, and have their

competition blocked.

 

How would this benefit anyone? It wouldn't folks. The only people this

bill would help are the telecom executives and their lawyers.

Meanwhile, it would take away a huge portion of the usefulness of the

Internet. Right now, the Internet is what it is because it offers

choices. There are dozens of different sites for just about anything.

Want to buy a TV? You don't have to buy it at Best Buy's site just

because Best Buy paid your ISP. You can shop around hundreds of sites

and choose the best price. Want to know about the movement of helium

atoms? Again, there are hundreds of resources.

 

Restricting those thousands upon thousands of sites, the blogs and the

eBay stores, the small businesses and corporate Web sites, even

services like the one you're reading now, won't help anybody. It'll

undo all of the progress made in the last decade.

 

Arguably the greatest achievement of mankind in the 1990s was setting

up this worldwide connection of knowledge, personality and commerce.

It changed all of our lives for the better.

 

Now, people who barely understand how to pronounce the terminology

have decided that it's time to tinker with the system. If they were

engineers, instead of politicians, they would be the type that

advocated pulling random parts out of an engine " just to see what

happens. " With such a valuable resource as the Internet, I think

that's an terrible approach.

 

DARLING Ted, that guy in Des Moines browsing Amazon for the latest Dan

Brown novel isn't slowing down your e-mail. Neither is the 16-year-old

in Busan who has played 28 straight hours of World of Warcraft at the

Internet café. The only person to blame for your slow e-mail, if your

e-mail was even slow to begin with, is your ISP. The telecom. The guy

you want to give ridiculous power and wealth to. People rally to fight

for the whales. They rally to fight for the trees. Well, let me tell

you, the Internet is a resource, too. And it needs its users, its

inhabitants, to fight for it. Because, like all of the natural

resources, there are people who can't see how important it is. All

these people can see is that they could make a bunch of money really

quickly by plundering all the good right out of it. Once it's gone,

everyone will realize what a mistake it was. And it will be too late.

 

Please, don't take this one sitting down, dear readers. Simply by

reading this, you're proving that you rely on the Internet, too. You

view it as a source of information. Here's what the Internet truly is:

A concierge that helps you shop wisely. That buddy who knows every

little fact that you've been going crazy trying to remember. It's part

of our daily lifestyles now. Don't let it be destroyed by people who

barely understand it.

Call your Senator. Call your Congressmen. Let them know that you

support network neutrality, a concept that is deeply ingrained in the

rest of the developed world. Because if you don't, not only might we

all lose this wonderful achievement, but we'll also continue to fall

behind the rest of the world. We'll be running a marathon with one leg

broken.

 

And it won't be anybody's fault but our own.

http://www.mytown.ca/harlan/149/

 

http://www.corvuswire.com/7-9.htm