Fergie's Tech Blog

Save The Internet: McCurry and the Telco Spinmeisters

Mark Cooper, Director of Research for The Consumer Federation of America, writes on SaveTheInternet.com:

The hiring of former Clinton Administration spinmeister Mike McCurry by a front-group funded by the Baby Bells is a text book example of telco manipulation of public opinion. McCurry effort to help companies like AT&T and Verizon put toll booths on the Internet underscores the inside the beltway, best-that-money-can-buy PR campaign they have embarked on to convince policymakers and the public that telephone companies should dictate which data flows over the Internet to the consumer.

McCurry is dishonestly spinning this brazen telco grab at Net control as a “Hands off the Internet” campaign.

The history of the Internet is clear and it contradicts this claim. The basic approach to the Internet requiring the unimpeded flow of data was dictated and funded by the Department of Defense in the 1960s to create an open communications system, a policy enforced by the National Academy of Science when it took over. The telephone companies, over whose lines the data flowed, were not allowed to engage in any sort of discrimination or manipulation of access to the Internet because it was the policy of the Communications Act, as implemented by the Federal Communications Commission in the Computer Inquiries (first launched in 1968) to keep the network neutral.

posted by Fergie @ 4/24/2006 04:41:00 PM