WTF are they thinking!?! Tech Companies against Net Neutrality!?!

These people should be drawn and quartered. My thought on Net Neutrality can be found in this post. More from Slashdot in this article.

Gamer's Guide to Politics: Censorship, Gaming Legislation and Protecting Children

(Gamer's Guide to Politics is a weekly article about the most important real world political issues that impact the Gaming Industry, and the gamer communities, and what yours truly thinks we should do about it.)

Can you hear and do you care and can you see we must be free to Teach the
children to believe and make a world that we can live in. Teach your children
well, their parent's hell did slowly go by and feed them on your dreams, the
ones they picked, the ones you'll know by. (Teach Your Children - Crosby, Stills, Nash).

As a family man, father of one beautiful baby girl, these issues have a certain resonance with me. Beyond that, I can speak from a position of personal involvement, as these are factors that my wife and I consider on a daily basis. How will media effect Arianna? How do we raise our daughter with a sense of moral understanding and a foundation in right and wrong, and how much exposure do we allow to the reality and alternate reality worlds that exist in our culture?

This task is the sole responsibility of the parents. Legislators have no business in legislating morality and interceding in my relationship with my family. Video game and movie violence has been greatly vilified of late, as a cause of violence and social imbalance in young people... This is simply a blame game of the worst kind. I grew up exposed to extremely violent TV, movies and various media, yet my subliminal urge to kill has never surfaced. My parents guided and molded me into a proper social animal, just as I am doing with my child.

Recently, legislators led by Senator Joseph Lieberman passed S1902, the Children Media Research Advancement Act (CAMRA). This bill allocates government dollars to study the effects of violence in gaming, on children, with the expressed intent to follow with restrictive legislation, should the results indicate a link. To support such measures is a direct assault on the principle of free speech that this country holds dear.

So, in the interest of protecting my daughter from harm by sheltering her from violent media, these legislators would confiscate her basic and inalienable rights. What trade-off is that? Gun Control opponents have a very famous line, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" and I think a similar link can be made here.

Children that take up arms and slay others, may play games as has been implied in the recent, tragic shooting in Montreal. However, this is a case of a social malcontent, mentally unstable and without the proper childhood guidance. Video games did not cause that shooting any more than God is responsible for the deaths of our fellow citizens on 9-11 because some mentally unstable, radical Islamic extremist claims it to be so.

So what should be done... Well, for one thing, we the gaming community must continue to educate the public that we are normal people from a wide spectrum of social backgrounds, and demographics. We must combat reactionary public policy at every turn, and counter insinuations that because we engage in or produce violent media, we are social misfits, and most critically, we much pressure our state and federal representatives to oppose radical actions that infringe on our basic rights.

• Sen. Lieberman must go. The reasons are too numerous to list, but this guy is wrong for Connecticut and wrong for America. Do what you can to help elect Ned Lamont this November and support someone who wants to preserve basic American rights, such as free speech.
• Call your representatives in Congress. Call your Governor. Tell them that you are responsible for your children's well being, not them, and you want them out of your computer, your TV and your personal lives.
• Get active and get vocal. The shrill voice of the censorship shills are much more vocal than us, and they spend more money lobbying Congress. We have the votes that matter, however, and must use them.

46 days until the midterm elections... 46 days to let the political elite know we mean business... 46 days until the proponents of censorship are kicked to the curb. Volunteer, call and write your representatives, find out where they stood on S1902, and other key initiatives, and last but not least, cast your vote this November and send a clear message to Washington that THIS WILL NOT STAND!

Gamer's Guide to Politics: Net Neutrality

(Gamer's Guide to Politics is a weekly article about the most important real world political issues that impact the Gaming Industry, and the gamer communities, and what yours truly thinks we should do about it.)

Net Neutrality is or should be, one of the meta issues of any gamer's political philosophy, and a deciding factor in our decisions about who we support, or who we kick to the curb this election cycle. Democrat, Republican or Not-Interested, Liberal or Conservative, this is an issue that we all need to care about and more importantly, do something about.

So what is Net Neutrality, you ask?

Net Neutrality legislation would insure equality and equal access to the speed and flow of information on the Internet for all users and providers. It would prohibit cable and telecom providers from charging different rates to different providers for the same service of accessing and providing access to the Internet through their cable and phone lines. In short, Net Neutrality would preserve the very existence of the information super highway, as we know it today.

Here's the danger of life without net neutrality: Currently, an Internet service provider, or ISP, charges the companies whose sites it hosts, be they Google or Willamette Week, the same amount of money per byte that's transmitted. What Verizon, Qwest, BellSouth, Time Warner, SBC, Comcast and AT&T—the main supporters of the new telecom legislation and opponents of net neutrality—want is to charge content providers more for higher levels of service (Willamette Week Online).

So who cares if Google or The New York Times can pay a little more money to have priority access and higher load speeds, right? Any proponant of free speech, the free and equal dissemination of ideas, and preserving the sanctity of the Internet in its present state, should be outraged.

The primary issue at stake is the extent to which a fully deregulated Internet, as proposed in the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006, will have on our ability to access all forms of public opinion, media and content. What happens when Rupurt Murdoch, decides that his political views are more important than your right to access a myriad of political and social views? After MySpace parent, Intermix Media, was purchased by Murdoch's New Corp, unconfirmed reports began to sping up almost immediately of MySpace pages critical of Republican and conservative leaders were being shut down or regulated.

Ok, so some big companies could restrict the flow of information on the Internet, or prevent certain content from being available to consumers... I am a gamer, I kill dragons and /dance over the corpses of my slain enemys... What does this have to do with me?

Well, the Internet is the physical manifestation of our virtual homes. The cable and phone 'roadway' that links us, with the Existential World of our choosing, is under attack, and I for one, am not going to sit idle, while some newb company ganks my right to access that world! After they strip the Internet of all 'questionable' content by rendering it unviewable due to increasingly slower load times, who is to say they will not decide that Azeroth or Norrath are questionable content, and begin to squeeze our access as well? Blizzard and SOE could afford to pay the highest tier toll rates on access, but could indie game companies, or newly produced games that are barely able to afford to ship, let alone pay for the right to transmit their product?

Ok, now I'm pissed, but I'm just a pimple faced geek living in my parent's basement, who can barely get the Cheetos stains off my fingers... what could I possibly do about all this?

We have camped the same spawn for hours, in search of that one drop to round out our set... We have run the same grueling plane over and over flagging our guildmates to progress, we have grinded on the same damn mob for weeks to level, or farmed the same instance for gold and loot upgrades...

We are gamers, and when we want something bad enough, we can be persistant and we can be tireless in our single-minded pursuit of that goal. That is what we must do to insure that this assault on our virtual worlds does not go unpunished.

It's time to camp the Politician Spawn. We have to pwn these noobs for not supporting Net Neutrality. 53 days until the Mid-Term elections. Call your Congressional Leaders. Call your Governors office. Write them an email. Do it often. Let them know that no matter how great they are on such-and-such an issue, and what they may have done for our Country, being on the wrong side of this issue is going to get them voted out.