Corporations Plan To Pull Plug On The Free Internet
Web users naive about agenda to turn Internet into regulated cable TV model

 

 

The Internet is the last true unregulated outpost of freedom of speech but moves are afoot to stifle, suffocate, control and eventually pull the plug on the world wide web as we know it. These threats are not hidden nor are they hard to deduce and yet a significant number of Internet users remain naive as to their scope.

Despite many questioning the authenticity of a report that claimed ISP's had resolved to restrict the Internet to a TV-like subscription model where users will be forced to pay to visit selected corporate websites by 2012, while others will be blocked, the march towards regulation of the web is clear and documented.

We have been warning about the plan to let the old Internet die and replace it with a restricted and controlled Internet 2 for years. In 2006, we published an article about how the RIAA were attempting to broaden intellectual property distinctions to a point whereby merely linking to external content is judged as copyright infringement.

At the time, the article was met with a mixed response. Many were aware of the imminent dangers that threaten to change the face of the Internet but others were more hostile to the supposition that the world wide web could be devastated by landmark copyright case rulings as well as plans to develop "Internet 2."

Some accused us of yellow journalism and scaremongering yet the warning that the Elektra vs. Barker case could criminalize the very mechanism that characterizes the Internet was not concocted by Alex Jones or Paul Joseph Watson, it was a statement made by the very lawyer fighting the case, Ray Beckerman.

It was a danger also reported on by one of the UK's biggest technology news websites, the Inquirer, which also highlighted the frightening development in an article entitled, RIAA wants the Internet shut down.