August 08, 2005

David Isenberg has a rather sad comparison of changes made in the re-statement of The Four Internet Freedoms that was released last Friday.

I've heard of changes like this happening before somewhere, now where was it? Oh, yes, Animal Farm.

A FEW days later, when the terror caused by the executions had died down, some of the animals remembered-or thought they remembered-that the Sixth Commandment decreed "No animal shall kill any other animal." And though no one cared to mention it in the hearing of the pigs or the dogs, it was felt that the killings which had taken place did not square with this. Clover asked Benjamin to read her the Sixth Commandment, and when Benjamin, as usual, said that he refused to meddle in such matters, she fetched Muriel. Muriel read the Commandment for her. It ran: "No animal shall kill any other animal without cause." Somehow or other, the last two words had slipped out of the animals' memory.

As David points out:

And the Martin FCC adds an important footnote:
All of these principles are subject to reasonable network management.

This nation is rapidly falling in broadband penetration and will soon be losing any hope of scientific knowledge as it is turned on it's ass by rulers who preach a fundamentalism that is becoming indistinguishable from the ranting of those that brainwash their followers into walking into subways with backpacks filled with hate.

The world is changing; we can no longer maintain the status quo. The internet changes commerce, the internet changes relations, the internet changes how you gather information; the internet changes everything. The internet is the future. There is no chance of regaining the good old days. Rotary dial phones can not be the wave of the future.

We must not just keep up with other countries we must keep ahead. We can not do it by adding words to basic tenets of freedom, we can not do it by suppressing the individual, we can not do it by changing the rules of scientific research by some slightly veiled right wing reworking of religious values into “intelligent design”.

David, I’m scared to. I scared that America’s future looks like this.

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