our Senators have little time left to take free trips to the Riviera paid for by Telecom lobbyists to study Net Neutrality

If you're reading Vleeptron (why did I even say that?), you probably got it within 1 second of clicking on the URL or link. If there was some kind of annoying delay from click to full display, it was probably Blogspot.com's fault -- they had some kind of Constipation Event a few days ago. Right now if you perceive any delay on your trip to Vleeptron, it's just Mystery Tek Gremlins, and not too many, and not too often.

Enjoy this Infrastructure Environment. Look on these Gremlins as your friends, your annoying but beloved little pets peeing on your virtual rug now and then. Look on this moment of the Internet as the Golden Years, a moment to be recalled and remembered fondly.

If a big part of what you do in Cyberspace reflects One-Man-Band sorts of things like Vleeptron, and things physically and geographically (and legally and economically) going on in the USA, prepare (no, don't bother, there's nothing you can do) for The Big Slowdown.

Prepare for The Big Tollbooth on the Information Superhighway.

Big Corporate Web Users will get the E-Z Pass and whizz right past the Tollbooth at 70 mph.

Vleeptron and all the cool, goofy, beautiful, interesting One-(Wo)Man Bands out there on the Web are about to get Muy Constipado, and there'll be only one Hardware or Software Solution to speed these Human Flowers from Creator/Creatrix to your screen: Big Money. The kind you don't have. (Unless you're Bill or Melinda Gates -- Hi Mr. and Mrs. Gates!!! Please Leave A Comment!)

Vleeptron is hopeless. In the eighteen months Planet Vleeptron has been playing its Organ Grinder Monkey Music on the Sidewalk of the Information Superhighway, Planet Vleeptron has carried not a single advertisement or commercial message. We don't sell Viagra, we don't sell mp3s, we don't sell porn.

(Well, okay, we showed you where to buy the Fake Pizza, and when we filch a beautiful piece of art, we tell you where you can find the artist's website.)

But Vleeptron ain't making a Pfeneg of profit.

And so far, you still click and get your Planet Vleeptron jive and nonsense and pretty, silly images within a second.

The other day, the US House of Representatives caved to the Free Corporate Jet Vacations ("fact-finding trips") of the lobbyists for the huge Telecom corporations, monopolies and vertical (and horizontal) trusts. In the Lower House, our Congresschmucks whored out and killed Net Neutrality.

But it still has to pass the US Senate. America's 100 Senators must now take a lot of Fact-Finding Trips to the Caribbean and St. Andrew's Golf Course in Scotland on Lear Jets, tab generously picked up by their Telecom Pals, before they tackle Net Neutrality.

Nostrabobus doesn't have a clue how they'll vote.

All Nostrabobus can predict with absolute certainty is that on Tuesday 7 November -- ye Day of Reckoning -- one-third of the Senators will be up for re-election. And Nostrabobus can also predict with absolute certainty that, if Net Neutrality dies in the Senate, Vleeptron will be happy to tell you the name of every Senator who voted to flush NN down the toilet.

Every House member will be up for re-election. Vleeptron will tell you how your member voted on Net Neutrality, too.

Are you registered to vote? Voting is Good. On Monday, give a phone call to your Voter Registrar and double-check that you're still Good To Go in November.

Oh -- Very Curious Thing ...

Who reads Vleeptron? Who cares what Vleeptron says and writes?

If you checked [ nobody cares ] ... well, you're sorta Wrong.

Every time Vleeptron has posted about Net Neutrality, we get these strange Anonymous Comments -- no link, no way to trace who they are or where they come from -- and all of them explain why Net Neutrality is actually Bad for ordinary Web Surfers, and we'll all be better off if it dies.

So Watch This Space and read the Comments.

The Telecom Behemoths are employing an Army of Paid Trolls to convince Surfers NOT to phone and e-mail their elected representatives to demand they preserve Net Neutrality.

It sure would be nice if some Real News Agency -- the kind you read in the dentist's waiting room -- tracked down this Secret Boiler Room and did a story on it.

====================

The Independent (UK daily)
Saturday 10 June 2006

Bloggers take on
telecoms giants
to save spirit of Net

by Stephen Foley in New York

Campaigners across the political spectrum are massing against plans to introduce "congestion charging" on the World Wide Web, which they say could kill the spirit of the internet.

An army of bloggers has been joined by celebrities including the singer Moby and the founders of Google and Microsoft to fight a decision in the US House of Representatives that allows telecoms companies to charge popular websites for priority access to the Web.

A law that would have enshrined the neutrality of the Net was voted down by congressmen late on Thursday.

[Vleeptron Editorial: Fuck You, Congress.]

Telecom and cable companies are in effect being allowed to erect toll booths along the information superhighway - and individuals who post their own videos or blogs online could find their websites confined to the internet's B-roads or even blocked altogether.

Instead of an anarchic free-for-all that has dramatically broadened free speech and democratised access to information, the internet would come to be dominated by the giant internet and media companies that could afford to pay to make their content most easily available, campaigners say.

The battle is shaping up as a clash between the corporate lobbying power of the telecoms and cable industries and a shambolic but powerful grassroots resistance movement fostered on the internet. That movement hopes that the US upper house, the Senate, will reintroduce the guarantee of Net neutrality into its own telecoms bill, which it starts debating next week.

Robert McChesney, founder of the savetheinternet.com coalition, said:

"If we lose Net neutrality, we lose the most promising method for regular people to access and provide diverse and independent news, information and entertainment. We will see the internet become like cable TV: a handful of massive companies will decide what you can see and how much it will cost. Gone will be the entrepreneurship and innovation that has made the internet the most important cultural and economic engine of our times."

Savetheinternet.com and others are fostering a resistance movement on the Web, through community sites such as MySpace and on amateur video sharing web services like YouTube.com.

Meanwhile, Bill Gates of Microsoft has been pressing the issue with politicians. And Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, was on Capitol Hill this week making his first stab at lobbying. Google started as an offshoot of Stanford University and grew through word of mouth, but it may never have got off the ground if it had to pay "congestion charges" in its early days.

Telecoms companies lobbied hard against the Net neutrality law, because they want to start charging popular websites for the large amounts of bandwidth they use. They contend that their cable networks will soon become congested because websites such as Google and even broadcasters are starting to offer video over the internet. Charging these companies is only fair, they say, and would generate cash to invest in upgrading the network.

- 30 -

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© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited