AT&T and Suw illustrate my point below

AT&T paid millions to run an ad that emphasises the wires in the network.
If they do their job right, we are unaware of the wires.

Conversely, Suw of ORG speaks clearly and coherently to DRI for 40 minutes on the threats to an open net. This is well worth watching - I learnt a lot and I've been trying to follow these issues myself.

This also illustrates the deeper point - the net can as easily bring us video from a small group of thoughtful and engaged people as from a trillion-dollar corporation. The head of AT&T wants to take back the pipes from the open net, and stop us putting up video without paying them extra.

Senator Ron Wyden introduced an Internet Nondiscrimination Bill today, which sounds encouraging.

Here's my parody of the AT&T ad - with narration changed to say what they mean.


PS A tip for Google videos in general. The default Flash player looks ratty and has trouble maintaining sync. Click on the 'Download for iPod' mpeg4 version and play that in VLC, iTunes or QuickTime Player. Why Google won't let us fast-start these I don't know.

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