Reply #6: Corporate US media interests are lobbying NOW to "own" the internet

[Nothing Without Hope]

and most of them are owned by pro-Bush interests.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2465369
thread title (2-16-06 GD-P): phone, cable lobbyists engaged in political campaign to weaken internet
Comment/excerpt: The Nation article by Jeff Chester, “The End of the Internet?” Excerpt: “To make this pay-to-play vision a reality, phone and cable lobbyists are now engaged in a political campaign to further weaken the nation's communications policy laws. They want the federal government to permit them to operate Internet and other digital communications services as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight. Indeed, both the Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are considering proposals that will have far-reaching impact on the Internet's future. Ten years after passage of the ill-advised Telecommunications Act of 1996, telephone and cable companies are using the same political snake oil to convince compromised or clueless lawmakers to subvert the Internet into a turbo-charged digital retail machine.”
Of course, if they own and control it, then not only do we pay more, the content is no longer open but subject to censorship like Google’s operation in China. And of course most corporate media ownership is in the hands of Bush supporters.

If they succeed, there's nothing to stand in the way of a Chinese-style censorship of the free internet - the only lifeline to the truth we have.

And let's not forget the recently revealed (in the British press) Pentagon plan to "fight the internet." We ALL SHOULD READ THE BBC ARTICLE ON IT:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4655196.stm

Excerpt - and this is the sober, cautious BBC:
"The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet."

A pdf file on the page with the BBC article gives the Pentagon anti-internet plan. It's partly Psyops for other countries AND THE US, but it's also development of tools for all-out take-down of the internet.