Senator who voted against net neutrality confused by concept

Posted Jul 3rd 2006 1:34PM by Tobias Buckell
Filed under: Industry, Rants and Raves, Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), Apple Inc (AAPL), eBay (EBAY)

The internet is really a set of tubes? Well, that's what Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) claims. In a bizarre attempt to explain why he voted against Net Neutrality amendment he attempted to explain how the internet worked with statements like the following:

"I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially."

While this complete ignorance of how technology works in any sense may benefit companies that can throw lobbyists against a wall until people like this Senator become worried about how internet 'tubes' work, can government and tech-dependent small businesses really interact safely?

While large telecommunications companies pushing this bill will survive, would the Googles, Apples and eBays that we track now spring into existence when legislators like this get involved in trying to legislate the internet?

And with so many tech corporations having an effect on the stock indexes, what effect will it have to our country when the fundamentally technologically illiterate are allowed to craft legislature? It's probably time for old Ted to use those 'tubes' of his that are connected to his house so that he can maybe fire off a few 'internets' to someone who can educate him...

Tags: net neutrality, NetNeutrality, ted stevens, TedStevens