The telecoms must be scared; they're already fighting dirty. Consider, if you will, these three news items:

1. Hands Off the Internet, a "grassroots" website against network neutrality.
2. Tom Giovanetti's OpEd in the Mercury News, "Network neutrality? Welcome to the stupid Internet."
3. Sen. Ted Stevens' already infamous "The Internet is a series of tubes" speech.

Let's deal with these in order of hilarity.

First, there's nothing "dirty" about poor Senator Stevens. He just clearly has no idea what he's talking about. I don't even know the dude's party affiliation, and frankly it doesn't matter. But it does show that the lobbyists are pulling out all the stops and not letting this one merely play out in the "Court of Public Opinion" (probably because they know they'd be found guilty) by rounding up all the Luddite, out-of-touch Senators they can in order to stop net neutrality in its tracks. Perhaps I'm being unfair to this elected official. Obviously, we can't expect our duly-appointed representatives to be experts on every subject, like "what the internet is".

Second, I'm unsure how to approach Tom Giovanetti's piece, because I not only fundamentally disagree with him, but I also happen to know that he's a hired gun PR guy that gets paid to polish turds. He's the president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a conservative think-tank that muddies the waters around debates that should be open-and-shut if a sincere discussion were to take place. Consider his previous work for privatizing social security and against municipal wireless and open source software. So, he's a dick.

But even beyond that, consider his argument against network neutrality: access to mainstream media, like television and telephones and even police radio, will plunge into chaos because of "extremely high demand" for something stupid. Where are the heroic telecoms flying to the rescue to prioritize content!? Their hands are tied by draconic legislation! Argh! Except, isn't "extremely high demand" already prioritizing content? Who benefits from a system that prioritizes anything other than what people want? Perhaps whomever is paying Mr. Giovanetti?

Finally, the "grassroots" website. The most astute of you will notice the quotation marks I insist on putting around the word "grassroots". This is perhaps because the "grassroots" website is produced in connection with PR group Public Strategies, Inc. and funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from telecoms and conservative lobby groups. So, if you consider AT&T, BellSouth, and Cingular to be the ABCs of concerned regular folks like you and me, feel free to remove the quotation marks when you talk about it.

I don't completely blame them. Just like record companies, oil companies, and certain government agencies, everyone's trying to pay the rent and send their kids to college and so they work the system with whatever tools they have in their chest. The telecoms may have a lot of money and power but they should know that—after seeing the revolutionary promise of the printing press, radio, and television turned into celebrity spreads, pre-programmed rotations, and reality shows—we're not going to let the internet go without a fight. It has finally pulled itself out of its pages-of-links-to-pages-of-links phase and started to make good on its promise to connect and empower people. We should let it.