Small blog-aided victory

I reported earlier on the good work of Harold Feld (of the Media Access Project) over on  Wetmachine to shine a light on slimey, telco-sponsored, anti-democratic bills in Pennsylvania and Indiana.

Harold now reports that the Indiana bill has gone down in flames, a victory due in no small part to awareness created by bloggers like Harold.

Disclosure: Wetmachine is my site, and with this diary I'm blog-whoring.  Nevertheless it won't cost you much to follow the links, and I'm sure that if you click like I'm telling you to click, darling, it will make you feel so, goooooood.

As Harold (and I) keep(s) pointing out, the war which the telecommunications companies have launched against municipal wireless is about a lot more than sweetheart deals to funnel taxpayer money to Most Favored Corporations.

It's also, and most importantly, about CONTROL.  It's about who gets to use the Internet and who gets to have their voices heard.

We suffered a defeat in Pensylvania, but, thanks to blog-sponsored resistance, not a total rout.  Now we've had a victory in Indiana.  That leaves 48 more states in which the battle has not yet been joined (and of course there is always the possibility of a counter-attack in "safe" states like Indiana).

If you care about preserving the (shrinking) arenas of protected civic discourse, I respectfully suggest you keep an eye on Harold's work.