Noam Chomsky Quotes

Washington faces a simple choice: allow the Internet to remain as an engine of innovation, a platform for speech in even the harshest tyrannies, and a unified connection for people across the globe—or cede control of the Internet to service providers motivated by their parochial interests.

Even though the Internet touches every part of our lives, one person is to blame for potentially destroying its potential for innovation and freedom of expression: former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

The idea of the Internet as sort of open and democratic and free and with no hierarchy, the libertarian beginnings as it were, with peer-to-peer networks... I'd sort of like for everyone to just admit that we're beyond that now.

The message I'm trying to send is that technology is political, and that many decisions that look like decisions about technology actually are not at all about technology - they are about politics, and they need to be scrutinized as closely as we would scrutinize decisions about politics.

The Internet is a politically contested space.

Technical standards can be designed either to foster openness or to permit censorship and surveillance. In short, the Internet, before it is physically constructed from routers and cables, is made up of values.

We think of the Internet as a bottom-up phenomenon. There are people and countries that would like to treat it as a top-down institution; Americans resist that and I think rightfully so. It would cramp our style in terms of creativity, innovation, and so forth.

One of the great debates about the Internet is whether it is making people more or less free.

Information technology is a formidable enabler of freedoms. For example, it lowers barriers to freedom of expression and allows people to get a better grasp of their lives. It should not be used to reduce the freedom of people.

I think we should not control the Internet.

The core problem is that the world is full of people who would like to take 99 per cent of the information that's on the Internet, and eliminate 1 per cent. Everyone has their own thing they don't like.

An overly expansive virtual 'toll' for the Internet that blocks consumers' and competitors' access to the e-commerce superhighway is not the right answer.

Five or ten years ago, when it was clear the Internet was becoming a mainstream phenomenon, it was equally clear that a lot of people were being left out and could be left behind.

Google's entire business model and its planning for the future are banking on an open and free Internet. And it will not succeed if the Internet becomes overly balkanized.

I am in favor of complete freedom of information and of free access to the new communication tools, in particular the Internet.

Young Egyptians, gazing through the windows of the Internet, have gained a keener sense than many of their elders of the freedoms and opportunities they lack. They have found in social media a way to interact and share ideas, bypassing, in virtual space, the restrictions placed on physical freedom of assembly.

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

Both the American people and nations that censor the internet should understand that our government is committed to helping promote internet freedom.

The open network is like the open society- crime thrives, but so does creativity.

network neutrality

To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue. ...

The Great Firewall of China and the unrestricted surveillance by the National Security Agency illustrate a tendency for the state to assert its interests at the expense of individuals.

Without net neutrality protections, the Internet would no longer be a free and open ecosystem for innovation.

The public should have access to unfettered communication and commerce, and the Internet is increasingly the medium where that takes place.

To go back to a 1950s voice mentality with Title II and net neutrality would be a tremendous mistake for our country.