I’m in Washington and so I’m seeing different commercials here: spin aimed at a few hundred legislators and regulators. And boy, oh boy, are the telcos spinning on net neutrality.
I saw one commercial urging a vote against neutrality ending with this punchline: “They call it net neutrality. We call it sticking it to the consumer.” This from the folks who know all about sticking it to the consumer: phone companies (and their friends). Here‘s their website.
Later, I saw another commercial arguing that the current legislation embodies Michael Powell’s four freedoms for the internet and so that’s plenty and anything more would be dreaded government regulation. Their site is here.
It’s all transparently opaque: They don’t say what they’re up to but they’re trying to hard it’s obvious they’re spinning.
: At the Union Square roundtable about net neutrality, copyright, patents and such last week, I argued that apart from a blogging campaign, the net neutrality folks are doing a terrible job presenting the case to the public. Someone else said that the folks who came up with monikers like “the death tax” would never call a cause “net neutrality.” Tom Evslin says they should be calling it “America’s Antiterrorist Network.”
: I wish someone in D.C. would record and share the commercials that run only here so we can all get a window on how the lobbyists are spinning their webs around our government.
: LATER: I missed it the first time I heard the commercial above but just saw it again: They are using Google as the bad guy. Big, bad Google is trying to make you pay for the internet, they say. Their logic is missing a few links but it’s fascinating that they can paint Google in a dastardly role. Maybe they have research to show falling trust in Google. Maybe they just think that big is bad and now Google is bigger than they are.
