Chatting with Bill Moyers

Today the scribe participated in a wild and wacky Internet forum related to Bill Moyers’ program on public television, “Moyers on America.”

He’s got a big show on Internet freedom next week some time, and got it into his head to get together with bloggers for input prior to locking the final cut.

highwayscribery was contacted because it had signed-on earlier in the year with the “Save the Internet” coalition. We put a button up linking to their page and did a few posts in the name of net neutrality (as we understood it).

A couple of weeks ago highwayscribery explained the reason for having taken down the “Save the Internet” button at left and replaced it with the “Washington Post Global Chat" in a post called "Changes."

Fending off charges of glory seeking, the scribe said that the big telecommunications bill was dead for the legislative season and that we were all safe for another year, which was, to put it mildly, a misreporting of the situation.

And that is why you have to be careful when you read blogs and continue to respect the scribes at places who get paid to dig stuff up.

Turns out, big telecom companies including Verizon and AT&T have already been unleashed from government requirements keeping the Internet free. The only thing stopping them from asking a blogger or retail web page to pay up for prompt connection is a “scrutiny” period soon to end.

Then things are going to happen, according to Moyers' Team.

highwayscribery had a great time simultaneously following the audio proceedings while chatting with the panel itself, the other bloggers, never mind, it's hard to explain. Something like "Washington Post" GlobalChat, but much faster, on two channels at once.

the scribe punctuated the rather techie and rolling discussion with, "When do we get to meet Bill Moyers?" and later with, "I still don't know what I'm doing, but it's fun!"

The Moyers’ forum panel took up the scribe’s question as to whether a Congress controlled by Democrats would help the cause of “net neutrality” rules that would bind the telecom giants from to equal treatment across the World Wide Web.

The guy who answered said it would make up a big difference. He said that net neutrality is an issue that animates hot conservatives and cool communists alike, a bipartisan issue, but that “the Dems have been much better on it.”

It’s really a question of monopoly, which the good anarcho-syndicalists at highwayscribery wholeheartedly oppose.

(No, we will not be putting the button back up for the time being.)

Also, the PostChat question today is, “Should North Korea be punished?”

highwayscribery’s entry was:

Living in Los Angeles, looking at the map, and adding the very little I know about nuclear delivery systems into the mix, I think we should not punish them.

“Punish.” What’s that? Starving millions of people living under tyranny in the hopes their hungry bellies will lead them to revolution? And is punishment supposed to force N.K. to ditch its program, or increase its paranoia?

When the administration has cared so little for non-proliferation (see recent deal with India and other stuff) why should anybody else?

The buck stops with Bush on this one. When you don’t talk to people and label them as part of an “axis of evil” in a speech about something else completely, you get a nuclear test - the diplomatic equivalent of the middle finger.

Join in by clicking on the two talking heads at left.