My letter to the Internet destroyers

[Canuckistanian]

I recently came across a site that looked suspicious. It's called "Hands Off THe Internet" ( http://www.handsoff.org/index.html ).

I immediately noticed the slick, almost too slick layout, the lack of credible outside links and the general mysteriousness of who they actually were. Their "partners" are a consortium of the cream of the corporate crop, along with some cryptic organizations I've never heard of. See them here:

http://www.handsoff.org/hoti_docs/aboutus/members.shtml

Obviously, I'm thinking they're the group that Mike McCurry is working for. So I decided to send a letter to a very tiny, hard-to-find link on their website:
[e-mail]

Here's the letter:

Subject: You're not fooling anybody

To whom it concerns,

We know this site is a wholly owned subsidiary of telco lobbying groups. And we know that this is a blatant money grab to extort money from small content providers in exchange for guaranteed access.

Nice touch with the "greedy corporations" and "government regulation" themes. It might take in a few gullible people.

But we're organizing against you. And we've had some small successes already. And considering the blow that some telecom companies took yesterday, it's unlikely that you'll be considered any kind of people's champion for digital rights and freedoms.

I've been using the internet for over 10 years and this plan of yours goes utterly against the freedom that popularized the net in the first place. A lot of ordinary people have been empowered and they're not going to give up that power now.

Anyone with a right mind should work to shut you down.

Canuckistanian

I'm not expecting a reply.

[Dunvegan]

1. Applause. Touche.

[GoneOffShore]

2. Excellent - I'm going to be doing a bit

of paraphrasing.

And have you passed this on to PFAW and Common Cause. I bet they'd be interested.

K&R

[Canuckistanian]

3. Are they in this fight, too?

I was just reading firedoglake blog about "Open Source Lobbying" and found a list of orgs supporting this.

I don't remember reading about them.