Utilities in deed

Change.gov is the main place where the President-in-Waiting takes advice from the public. One item there is MPAA’s Key International Trade Issues, detailed in this .pdf. You can’t search or copy the content of that file because it’s a graphic. I guess the MPAA decided it would rather not post the text somewhere.

Alas, Change.gov doesn’t let you link to individual comments, so you’ll just have to hunt or scroll down to find the one by “skywriter”, who says,

I like the public utility analogy. The DEA can’t shut down a person’s electricity because they ‘suspect’ a person is growing pot in a back room of their house, nor can they shut off their water, why should a ‘non-governmental agency’ (No, MPAA, you are not a government agency no matter how much you like to think so) push for an ISP to cut off a person’s internet because you ‘suspect’ they might be doing bad things with their connection? Treat internet access like a utility, I say.

One goal of Net Neutrality, Wikipedia currenty says, is “A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on content…” By that angle alone the MPAA’s is a bad idea. Hard enough just to get the Net to people and keep it running for the good of everybody. Let’s not turn the Net into TV (which is censored… try saying “fuck” over U.S. airwaves), or worse — into a branch of Hollywood. Least of all by legislation.



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