July 22, 2006
Held together with Glureed
I am bummed at the failure of politicians and the media to connect the issue of Net Neutrality to the issue of China’s internet censorship. The issue of internet censorship in China led to congressional hearings where:
“The House International Relations subcommittee’s top Democrat, Tom Lantos, told representatives of the companies that they had accumulated great wealth and power, “but apparently very little social responsibility”.
“Your abhorrent actions in China are a disgrace. I simply don’t understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night,” the Associated Press quoted him as saying.” (bbc news)
Meanwhile, on the home front, we fail to recognize censorship under the guise of its free market counterpart —
“In today’s sausage factory of knowledge production, that is exactly the situation that we face. Dominant groups explain the world through their control of knowledge production. Subordinate groups are excluded, and as a result, subordinate knowledeges are excluded as well. In liberal societies, these knowledge disqualifications are not achieved primarily through the legal authority of censorship. But as Foucault reminds us, these disqualifications are made by the ‘ensemble of the rules according to which the true and the false are separated and specific effects of power are attached to the true.'” (The Birth of Postpsychiatry, p. 139)
Free and open discourse is under attack, in the homeland. Just ask a ninja: YouTube – Ask A Ninja Special Delivery 4 “Net Neutrality”
and here is something you can do:Save the Net
Filed by jonah at 11:22 pm under earth,ethics
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