This is a link to a piece I did for Tompaine.com based on the proposition that the telephone and cable companies are engaging in cynical wordplay when they cry “hands off” the Internet.
Here are the first couple of paragraphs:
The legislative opposition to establishing net neutrality is the story of a mantra gone horribly wrong. An idea crafted 10 years ago to protect the Internet, then a new medium, is being morphed into a weapon that would destroy the not-so-new medium a few years from now.
This “new Internet” would be one controlled not by individual freedom, but by the whim of the telephone and cable networks' owners.
It is ludicrous for the telephone companies and their congressional allies, principally Republicans, to fight against net neutrality on the basis of the fraudulent “don't regulate the Internet” mantra. The industry has the gall to name one of their propaganda sites, www.dontregulate.org, part of the “Hands Off the Internet” family–brought to you by the telephone and cable industries . All of their other arguments hang from this one basic, misapplied concept.