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ISOC Hires MPAA Executive Paul Beringer
First time accepted submitter imwilder writes "The Internet Society has hired Paul Beringer to head up its operations in North America. Beringer was formerly Chief Technology Policy Officer for the MPAA, and Executive Director of Internet and Technology Policy for Verizon Corporate Services. Does this challenge the notion that ISOC is a 'trusted, independent source of Internet leadership?'"
He was only at the MPAA for a year, and from what I hear, that was no accident. I know people who know him, and they say that he understands the Internet and didn't agree with what the MPAA was doing, and was described to me as "one of the good guys." We shall see, but he won't last long at ISOC if he isn't.
They're not my favorites either, but let's not become too pessimistic. All is not lost. The most important thing is that the free world remain so and that we retain the ability to resist all efforts to introduce censorship of any type.
We refer to this era we live in as the information age because the Internet is so amazingly effective at making it possible for people all over the world to freely exchange information. This has been great for most people, but since it has also had the effect of decommoditizing information in general, it has been bad news for the various publishing industries and their centuries-old business model, so don't be surprised if they continue to put up a fight.
They see censorship as the best way to once again make information scarce and thereby raise the value of their products, so our task is to raise public (and ultimately political) awareness that such an artificial measure can only be counterproductive at best. It will be much better for society in general if the publishing industries learned to develop new business models, rather than if our governments effectively allow them to dictate rules that will lead to the implementation of tools more befitting of a police state. If we allow that to happen, then we may wake up one day to find that the clock has indeed been turned back... to 1984.