Yeah… this is really sad. Ya know this is kind of like the old fat cats trying to get hip with the kids. Perverted! We “hip kids” have built in radar that can hear that shit from miles away. I haven’t blogged about it cause I don’t want to give my google juice (high google ranking) to these fuckers. (sorry for the brag) But I’m glad you did. The people have to know when Rove-ian media spin is fucking with their heads. Silly fuckers!

This is really about corporate federal control over local control. Individuals have the ability to lobby their municipalities with great success. It isn’t that hard to find your council person or mayor and give them a piece of your mind. They are the people who control your local cable franchise. At-least for now. You can easily round up a few hundred to thousand people and change elections. Basically help un-elect people. When presidents of the US fix elections and trash thousands of legitimate votes its much harder to influence government. in short real change happens locally.

If this bullshit legislation happens local change will take a serious blow. But my plan B is highly developed.

Fear not, all the unsavory links in that post got rel="nofollow"ed. More info here.

Justin, as I followed up on your comment on Emerging Telephony, it’s wrong to call Hands Off The Internet an “astroturfing” group. Look at the bottom of their page — there’s the logo for AT&T, there’s one for National Association of Manufacturers… now, compare to the Wikipedia entry you link: Astroturfing aims to create the “appearance of independent public reaction” that is diverse.

It seems to me fairly obvious that Hands Off is pretty upfront that it is an industry-backed group. Am I missing something here?

The group I wonder about is Save The Internet. Considering the millions Google has poured into MoveOn regarding this issue, doesn’t that make you wonder what else they’re backing?

Long story short, Net Neutrality is a legitimate cause to support, although I do disagree — just don’t mischaracterize the other side.

Starble, “mischaracterize the other side”? Ahem?

Let’s see, maybe I was referring to the first sentence on their website:

Hands Off The Internet is a nationwide coalition of Internet users united together in the belief that the Net’s phenomenal growth…

Hmm, that suggests to me, well, “a nationwide coalition of Internet users.” Now if that quote were changed to read:

Hands Off The Internet is a nationwide consortium of multibillion-dollar telecommunications corporations and conservative interest groups united together in the belief that the Net’s phenomenal growth…

Then I’d be inclined to take your side.

[...] I was reading this post when I realized that I had no idea what rel=”follow” means. So I looked it up of course and I found this and I’ll admit, it took some time before it sank in (reading the explanations of RelNoFollow and RelTag reminded me of my undergrad math texts…) but now I get it! A tag space!!! It’s brilliant! [...]

…do you mean “scourge”?

What’s that extra “o” necessary for anyway? :) Fixed.

File this under unexpected. Google includes blog posts in its new Google Finance summaries of companies. Since I linked to a number of companies in this post, a summary of my post showed up on the page for MRV Communications, Inc. Hawt!

This kind of reliance on blogs for current information makes it even more important to speak out!

More information here: Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, Part 2: More Telecom Industry Front Groups and Astroturf (via Boing Boing)

In response to the previous commentor Starble: curious their word choice in the title of that piece, *cough* astroturf.