The time has come to demand that technology companies interested in real progress, and real freedom for competition, quit the Progress & Freedom Foundation.
Quit it. Now. Leave. Loudly.
Otherwise I brand each and every one of you as Luddites. This means you, Sun Microsystems. And you, Microsoft. It means Disney and eBay and BMG Software. All of you. You either condemn this and get out, or you are enemies of progress.
Here is the quote I find most objectionable, from an Infoworld story. It is reportedly from Jeffrey Eisenach, the co-founder of the PFF, at a PFF forum on network neutrality:
"Net neutrality is, in fact, the theft
of property rights from [broadband] infrastructure providers. It’s
simple regulatory theft — the transfer of ownership from one group of
people to another group of people."
Eisenach is the thief. To claim that giving everyone the same rights to ride the Internet is theft is not merely outrageous. It is the most brazen theft of the public interest I have ever seen in 30 years of covering technology.
It is an open invitation to monopoly and Luddism.
This is not just one quote at a forum. This was the point of the PFF’s entire forum, to turn reality on its head and brand the greedy, monopolistic Bells as innocent capitalists and the rest of the Internet community in the U.S. as thieves.
The opposite is the case. The Bells are hoarding bandwidth. Now they want to extend this and demand tribute from sites for delivering content they paid to host, to customers who paid to receive it. There is no "extra" service being presented. It is blackmail, plain and simple.
Yet Eisenach calls blackmail capitalism, and calls the victims anti-capitalists. In this he is speaking the speech of his biggest contributors, the Bells. But other companies, with other interests, should not allow themselves to be hijacked, and turned into yet-another Bell Astroturf organization.
Remember, please. This is the same crowd which is trying to get rid of open spectrum, and sell everything off to the highest hoarding bidder. You combine that with this and you have techno-fascism, absolute monopolies controlling our every bit, while the rest of the world zooms right by us, as fast as Moore’s Law will allow.
The Progress and Freedom Foundation? It’s the most Orwellian name I’ve ever heard.
Obviously, the struggle to preserve the Internet, and open competition
on the Internet, is becoming a political struggle. It’s a struggle on
which we all have to choose sides. Eisenach has chosen his side —
monopoly, Luddism, blackmail.
It’s time for Bill Gates, Scott McNealy and the rest to choose as well.
Failing to choose merely endorses Eisenach, and condemns us all to
Third World status.
