Net Neutrality

[Brownian Motion]

I have posted this article here because I really believe that net freedom is an idea we can all get behind.

Arianna Huffington

Bio

05.03.2006

"Net Neutrality": Why are the Bad Guys So Much Better at Naming Things? (298 comments )

READ MORE: New York Times, Google, 2006

Why are the bad guys so much better at naming things? Especially legislation. Especially bad legislation.

No Child Left Behind. Healthy Forests. Clear Skies. The PATRIOT Act.

They have a special gift for coming up with monikers that are easy to remember and easy to get behind. Sure, they're deceptive, but they're also very effective.

The same can't be said for the utterly befuddling "Net Neutrality" -- the critically-important push to ensure that the Internet stays democratic and uncontrolled by the telecom giants that want to become its gatekeepers. (For those not fully up to speed on this vital issue -- and that's most everyone I've talked to -- check out savetheinternet.com, and posts by Rep. Ed Markey, Adam Green, Josh Silver, and Matt Stoller). Now, I understand that "Net Neutrality" is a technical term used to describe the separation of content and network operations, but what political genius decided to run with such a clunky name? The marketing mavens behind the Kerry '04 campaign?

When you first hear "Net Neutrality", what immediately pops into your head? A tennis match in Switzerland? Basketball players who don't choose sides? Tuna fishermen who don't have a position on being dolphin-safe? Absolutely nothing? Bingo!

And that's the problem.

Net Neutrality legislation should be a no-brainer. A slam-dunk consensus-machine supported by every American not drawing a paycheck from Verizon, Comcast, BellSouth, Time Warner, or ATT (which leaves out Mike McCurry).

Run by the average voter the notion that Internet providers are going to be able to control which Web sites are available to them (and give the highest paying mega-sites better treatment than smaller ones), and he or she will tell you that it's a horrendous idea.

Who besides the telecom companies looking to cash in would be against keeping the Internet a level playing field? No one.

That's why groups as diverse as MoveOn.org and the Gun Owners of America -- as well as the editorial pages of the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Christian Science Monitor -- are backing Net Neutrality legislation. As Gun Owner spokesman Craig Fields put it: "Whenever you see people on the far left and far right joining together about something Congress is about to do, it's been my experience that what Congress is about to do is basically un-American."

Yet, at the moment, the forces of corporate greed are winning the day in Congress -- Rep. Markey's Net Neutrality amendment was voted down in committee last week (although his provision garnered more support than expected).

So, what' the problem -- other than the millions the telecom and cable companies are putting into lobbying Capitol Hill?

I say it's the crummy name. It's marketing death. No wonder the issue has yet to capture the public imagination. Yes, 400,000 people have signed a petition demanding Congress preserve Internet freedom (and thousands more have called congress) -- but this legislation will have profound effects for the 71 million households that are expected to have access to broadband coverage in the next five years. Tell those folks about it and they will be pissed -- if they understand what is at stake.

Besides being blander than Tony Soprano's post-coma diet, "Net Neutrality" is confusing.

When I mentioned I was writing about "Net Neutrality" today, a very savvy friend of mine asked, "Which side are we on?" If you don't know which side you are on from the minute you hear about an issue, that issue is dead legislation walking. People should be able to have as instant and passionate a gut reaction to Net Neutrality as they did to the Dubai ports deal.

It doesn't help matters that the telecom lobbyists are muddying the waters by creating faux grassroots groups like "Hands Off the Internet" to hide the industry's Internet-grabbing agenda.

"Net Neutrality" need to be rebranded. Its supporters have taken a crack by labeling it "the First Amendment of the Internet", which isn't bad but is still missing that special GOP message machine somethin'-somethin'.

How about: No Blogger Left Behind.? The Internet Freedom Act? The Yes to GOD Act (aka Yes to Google on Demand)? The Fast, Downloadable Porn Protection Act?

Post your suggestions in the comments section. I'll send the best ones on to Rep. Markey.

And join over 400,000 others in supporting Internet freedom by signing this petition to Congress.

There is still time to build the kind of public outcry that will force Congress to do the right thing and save the Internet. But we have no time to lose.

[Rooster_Ties]

She's right. Everything is in how you name an issue, and/or how you frame it (in conjuction with a good name).

That's the whole ball of wax, right there.

[Dave James]

There is very little, and by that I mean next to nothing, in the political world that isn't spun one way or another. Whenever I see something that's particularly cloying (No Child Left Behind) I'm automatically dubious of the intent. You have to give the "namers" their due, though. Regardless of the inherent duplicity in what they're doing, they are pretty darn good at doing it.

Up over and out.

[Randy Twizzle]

Another way of looking at it is that anything Huffington, MoveOn, The NY Times and a wacko gun group are against may actually have some merit. But that would be a political judgement and this is a non-political forum, and one must not support the "bad guys"

[BruceH]

I'd say anything the Wall Street Journal's editorial section is against must be good, and what they're for must be evil, but that would be a sweeping generalization.

[ghost of miles]

I'd say anything the Wall Street Journal's editorial section is against must be good, and what they're for must be evil, but that would be a sweeping generalization.

Pretty close to correct, though. Excellent news reporting from that paper, but the editorial page is absolutely heinous.

Actually, supporting Net Neutrality should be something that both liberals and conservatives could (and should) unite on.

[Randy Twizzle]

Do liberals really want to make common cause with evil conservatives? My god, wouldn't any contact with the forces of darkness irreperably soil them?

[ghost of miles]

Do liberals really want to make common cause with evil conservatives? My god, wouldn't any contact with the forces of darkness irreperably soil them?

Hey, when it comes to obnoxious legislation, enemy of my enemy is my friend, strange bedfellows, and all that. But we appreciate your concern!

[David Ayers]

'Political Correctness' was a masterstroke of naming.

[ghost of miles]

'Political Correctness' was a masterstroke of naming.

Actually, didn't that originate in Marxist circles? The term, I mean.

[David Ayers]

'Political Correctness' was a masterstroke of naming.

Actually, didn't that originate in Marxist circles? The term, I mean.

Yes it did, although surveying the sources on this (as I have done for something I am writing) I find that some of the American leftists so labelled by the Right who took up the term were unaware of its origin (not everyone had read up on the Russian Revolution, it seems), although they knew that on the Left it was sometimes used ironically - they just often lacked the context. Part of the masterstroke was finding a term that tended to label liberals as subversive (Leninist) repressive (Stalinist) and downright unAmerican (Russian!), all linked to the well known Orwell novel (and to the received idea of that novel for those who had never read it). But this part only applied to the minority who were in the know on such things. The real masterstroke was in the catchiness of the term combined with the strategy of complete misrepresentation that accompanied the creation of the myth. The left spent all the time whining about how unfair it all was instead of coming up with something as catchy, derisive and unfair of their own. Incidentally, Lyn Cheney has an early part in this, and there is a Paul Wolfowitz connection via his teacher, Allan Bloom, and his teacher, Leo Strauss. It came to a head when the ideas was planted in Bush's mouth, but as you will well know was part of US campus and intra-faculty struggles dating from the diversification of intake and introduction of campus speech codes from the late 1960s.

Edited May 6, 2006 by David Ayers

[Randy Twizzle]

'Political Correctness' was a masterstroke of naming.

Actually, didn't that originate in Marxist circles? The term, I mean.

A search of the NY Times shows that the phrase was used in Krushchev's 1956 secret speech denouncing Stalin, but strangely enough the only other time before 1956, that the phrase appeared in the Times, was in this curious display add from Oct 15, 1926. I'm not quite sure what it meant in this context