The Internet is a Plantation, With Comcast, Verizon, AT&T Its Masters: Court Overturns Net Neutrality

Can we trust corporations that help the NSA spy on Americans?
(Slide released by NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden.)

Thanks to a ruling by the US Circuit Court of Appeals in DC, telecom companies are free to dictate every aspect of what you can and cannot see, hear or do over the internet. It's an emergency. It's time to demand immediate presidential intervention to head off the end of the internet as we know it.






By Bruce A. Dixon
“Network neutrality” on the internet is the idea that anyone can access it, with any device to view or contribute any content. Network neutrality is the foundation of the internet as we have known it. According to the federal court of appeals in DC, network neutrality on the internet is now over.

From this point on, the court has ruled, internet providers can levy extra tolls upon, slow down or, simply ban any content or any users they choose, for any reason whatsoever. Internet companies can now tell you which hardware and software devices, what kinds of computers, phones, programs and applications you may or may not use, and from which locations. The internet is now a plantation, with Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon its masters, and the rest of us serfs or worse.

This is one of those ground breaking, those earth shaking moments that reveal how capitalism works, how greedy corporations have captured the media, the courts and the other two bipartisan branches of government in these United States. This ruling is not a surprise, it's what the telecom companies have demanded for years, and what the administrations of President Bush and Obama alike seem to want to give them.

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