Poor AT&T. First, we get the official word courtesy of Consumer Reports that Ma Bell is the planet's worst major wireless carrier. Now we hear the embattled giant is worried its First Amendment rights are about to be violated by those meanies at the Federal Communications Commission.
No, I'm not making this up. AT&T and its ally/rival Verizon are claiming in legal filings with the FCC that regulation of the Internet would deprive them of the right to free speech. Other big quasi-monopolies have used that argument to get what they want; the very same claim years ago by cable TV operators succeeded in allowing Comcast, Time Warner, and all the others to keep an iron lock on programming, says Chris Witteman, a communications attorney in San Francisco.
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that corporations do indeed have First Amendment rights to donate money to political causes, the climate has never been better to extend that logic to the Internet.
"Let us be clear: If the cable or telecommunications network owners are allowed to control the entirety of what transpires on 'their' networks, that is the end of the Internet as we know it," writes David C. Bergmann of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates, an advocacy group for ratepayers.
The FCC's knight in shining armor has given up the fight
The federal rule maker we thought would stop this kind of nonsense -- FCC chairman Julius Genachowski -- is playing right into the carriers' hands. Genachowski has surrendered to the special interests, putting forward a withered version of Net neutrality that will protect almost no one and give the big carriers nearly all of what they want. For that, he's the Tech's Bottom Line Bozo of the Month.
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http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/atts-perversion-free-speech-control-the-internet-898