Let's laugh at the phone-ies!

Have you heard the joke about Hands Off the Internet yet?

No? Listen up, this is a good one...

If you went by the title alone, you may believe that Hands Off The Internet is a group of folks who want people to stop dinking around with the internet -- hey, it's their name, right? After all, there's all this talk about network neutrality floating around, and since the internet is already neutral, then a hands-off approach will help keep things as they are, right?

Right?

In their own words, Hands Off the Internet is

...a nationwide coalition of Internet users united together in the belief that the Net's phenomenal growth over the past decade stems from the ability of entrepreneurs to expand consumer choices and opportunities without worrying about government regulation.

Maybe it's my cynicism, but my alarm bells are ringing already -- any time someone talks about "freedom from eviiiiiiiiil government regulation," I translate that into "allowing big corporations unfettered access to totally screw over consumers." (The Springfield nuclear power plant could be so much more profitable if it wasn't restrained with those pesky government regulations about waste disposal!)

If there are any doubts that Hands Off the Internet isn't a warm-and-fuzzy consumer-friendly ad-hoc group of nerds, check out their list of member organizations: Bell South, AT&T, Alcatel, Cingular...

Yeah, now that's a bunch of real ordinary grass-roots Joes there, uh huh.

(I get a further chuckle at the minnows swimming along the whales in an attempt to give them some legitimacy -- other "consumer" groups like NetCompetition, and a bunch of right-wing lobbying cliques, like the Center for Individual Freedom and the American Conservative Union.)

And if you are wondering -- as I was -- what the telcos' big stake in the net neutrality debate is, Wikipedia summarizes it thus:

To summarize: in an effort to change the internet from its current neutral and egalitarian state to a tiered, we-decide-what-sites-you-can-visit-and-when model, the bigwigs have put together a fake "consumer" site that's trying to pretend it's supporting net neutrality -- when they're actually working for the opposite. All that's missing are the "unsolicited" "true stories" from "actual members"...

It's as pathetic as watching a fifty-year-old divorcee slap on a bad toupee and try to pick up chicks, and almost as amusing. At least we can laugh at them without having to leave the comforts of our chairs.