The telecom slayers (update on Net Neutrality)

[NVMojo]

In the Capitol Hill battle over Net neutrality, a ragtag army of grass-roots Internet groups, armed with low-budget videos, music parodies and petitions, have the corporate telecoms, and their allies in Congress, on the run.

By Daniel W. Reilly

Oct. 02, 2006 | Ben Scott is smiling like a man who just hit the jackpot. As one of the coordinators of SavetheInternet.com, Scott is a leading advocate for Net neutrality, a congressional provision that would prohibit Internet service providers from charging Web sites for faster delivery of data. Scott is the closest thing there is to a field general in the grass-roots campaign to ensure Net neutrality, waging a daily battle with telecom giants AT&T and Verizon, who stand to boost their profits by creating toll roads on their Internet lines.

For more than a year, telecom lobbyists, who include former Bill Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry, have outgunned Scott and his ragtag army of bloggers, Internet entrepreneurs and consumer-rights activists on Capitol Hill. But on this fall day in his bare-bones office in Washington, Scott is grinning in victory. He knows he has succeeded in tripping up the lobbying goliaths with a simple weapon that couldn't be more appropriate in the battle over the Internet: a low-budget video posted on YouTube.com.

In the unadorned black-and-white film, college kids sit in front of a webcam and talk about the evils of an Internet without Net neutrality. "Do you want companies to control your clicks?" a goateed young man asks the camera. "This means slower connections to sites that are under competing ISPs," another says. "Let's keep the Internet free!" After a guitar solo and a hazy image of the American flag, the video goes black and directs viewers to SavetheInternet.com.

In the first week after it was posted on YouTube on Aug. 17, the video was viewed over 350,000 times, according to figures provided by the site. By comparison, the infamous "macaca" video of Virginia Sen. George Allen calling a man of Indian descent the racial slur, was viewed 200,000 times in roughly the same amount of time. A testament to the power of viral marketing, the Net neutrality video "is doing the work of 30 full-time communications professionals," Scott says. "And the best part is, I have no idea who made it."

more...

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/10/02/slayers/print.html

[AX10]

1. The Real Patriots!

[NVMojo]

2. grass roots!!