Julian Assange on Threat to Internet Freedom

December 2, 2010 by admin

Maureen Cruise wrote me:

Paraphrasing Orwell, Assange explains that he who controls today's internet servers controls the intellectual record of mankind. He warns us that Western governments, large corporations, and certain wealthy individuals are increasingly able and increasingly trying to remove material permanently from the historical record using sophisticated methods. If the West doesn't reverse its course of increased censorship and rights abuses, Assange warns, it will lose all of the ideals that it once stood for.

Be Well anyway....especially because there are people like Julian Assange in the world!!,

This is from the Oslo Freedom Forum 2010

Julian Assange - Oslo Freedom Forum 2010 (Part 1 of 2)

A number of groups have recently gone into panic mode after the courts ruled that the FCC didn't have the power to impose network neutrality or anything else on the Internet. This is a good thing as there are ways to protect net neutrality through the existing regime of international Internet regulatory bodies. This is not good enough for Free Press. They say:

The FCC Should Classify Broadband Internet Connectivity as a Telecommunications Service Under the Communications Act and Pair that Determination with Tailored Forbearance.

So the FCC should first cease near total control and then we must rely on the forbearance of all future administrations for freedom on the Internet.

Groups like Free Press and ColorofChange that hope to protect freedom on the Internet supporting FCC reclassification of the Internet in a way that gives the Federal government and whoever may be running it at the time, unlimited power to control the Internet, need to play close attention to Assange's words.

Julian Assange - Oslo Freedom Forum 2010 (Part 2 of 2)

Here is a recap of my other DKos dairies on this subject:
FCC Net Neutrality's Trojan Horse
Free Press: Country Codes for the Internet?
The Mountain comes to Mohammad
Keith Olbermann's Deception
Court rules -> Google Must Be Evil & Maximize Profits
EFF on the Google\Verizon Net Neutrality Proposal
Google-Verizon: What is the Free Press Agenda?
End of the Internet As We Know It!
Free Press would make this Illegal!
Google Verizon Announce Terms of Deal