"Save the internet, or try to."

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Original post, from jensimmons:

I love what’s been happening in the last couple years with the internet. More and more people are learning tech skills, more and more programmers have written these cool super-easy-to-use free tools, and more and more regular, everyday people are creating media content and posting it in this free distribution system for other people to see. Meanwhile the major media corporations have taken over the traditional spaces more and more. Most radio stations are owned by Clear Channel, who plays the same songs over and over in every city everywhere. Television, Hollywood, more and more it’s only one voice that’s hear in those places. People of color, queers, feminists — who ever let’s us speak? Well, now more and more, we don’t need them or their permission. We’ve all gone and built our own thing, and zillions of people are reading and looking and watching online instead of consuming the mass media. And those corporations know it. So what are they doing? Trying to stop us and take over again. This is just one of many many horrible things happening today. Immigration “reform”, all the ways the Bush administration has changed the constitution. All the secrecy and all the torture and snatching people off the streets without cause, without lawyers. The phone call tracking and internet use watching. It’s all so so much, so so fast. And so many of us in the U.S. do know what’s happening, but yet, are powerless to stop this slide into dictatorship. This video (from here, not only explains what’s happening with the internet, and what we each can do to try and stop it, but also, it expresses so well what it’s like to be an American these days. If we stop and realize, we are just overwhelmed. Where’s the hope? We know we are screwed. So call anyway, so if nothing else, when we are living in a police state, fearing for our lives and the lives of the people we love, and gas is $12.00 a gallon and we can’t afford heat, at least we’ll know we did do everything we could to prevent this.

(Via Mefeedia)