Brent Kearney

Now this is funny. Although, also scary. You be the judge.

Debate has been raging over "Net Neutrality" recently, since it has come under attack from large telecommunications companies and mindless politicians. Large telcoms such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast have been spending millions to lobby (bribe) U.S. politicians to implement laws which would allow them to break the Internet into tiers, so that they may give better access for sites who pay them more money. So websites from big TV networks, Hollywood studios and other large entities with deep pockets would get a lot more bandwidth, and would therefore work a lot faster and reach more people. On the other hand, you and I, the consumers, would get whatever meagre bandwidth that the big telcos feel like allowing us. This represents a fundamental shift in the way that the Internet works: the empowering thing about the Internet is that it allows anyone with access to become a publisher of information, everyone’s voice can be heard with equal opportunity. That is a bit of an idealization, but its close enough for our purposes. The new regulations would remove all of that, and make the Internet more like the cable TV networks – consumers pay for content, and publishers pay for bandwidth.

Even though this is only in the United States, the change would be profound for the world. The DNS root domains are located in the USA, for now, and a large portion of the content of the Internet lives in the USA. So breaking ‘Net Neutrality there would be a very bad thing. Luckily, those in charge really have a good understanding of how it all works! :P

Chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Senator Ted Stevens, gave a public address to explain how he understands the Internet to work, and why breaking ‘Net Neutrality would be a good thing. If you want the whole story, listen to the speech here. If you want a summarized, and much funnier version of the now infamous “Series of Tubes” speech, see below.

If you’re not familiar with Ted Stevens, representative from Alaska, you may recall his successful lobby for the Bridge to Nowhere, a $233 million dollar bridge to a town of 50 people, so that they don’t have to ride the ferry that comes every 15 minutes. The bridge will cost $4.5 million per resident. I guess in a country whose government cooks its books to the tune of $2.3 trillion, anything goes.

Getting back to the funny part, since the Series of Tubes speech, ridicule on the Internet has been intense. It started on the super popular Daily Show, with Jon Stewart, which provided some excellent coverage of the speech, complete with explanatory diagrams directly from Ted Stevens’ mind. Its a great summary if you’re not interested in listening to the whole rambling, stuttering, almost incoherent speech.

Then came the techno remix of the speech, “DJ Ted’s Techno Tubes”, in mp3 format, which you can download here. It captures some highlights of the Series of Tubes speech: “Tubes! Tangled up tubes! The Internet is not a truck! Its a series of tubes!” Hilarious.

The latest incarceration is the Series of Tubes video to go along with the mp3. Watch it here, on YouTube. Another great contribution to the Internet culture.

Inside sources at The Stupidity Awards tell me that Ted Stevens is a nominee for the forthcoming 2006 World Stupidity Award. He has my vote!

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