Common Cause - Holding Power ResponsibleCommon Cause - Holding Power Responsible

Topics
Our Issues
Money in Politics
Election Reform
Media and Democracy
Ethics in Government
Government Accountability
Press Center
Research Center
Register to Vote

Sign Up and join the Community - click here

Research

Your activism is paying off

By Dawn Holian Iype
Posted on Thu Mar 09, 2006 at 11:47:20 AM EST

Oops, looks like we made Mark Cuban mad. 

You'll remember that Mr. Cuban, the founder of HDnet, made some anti-net neutrality comments on his blog a few weeks ago.  He said: "we need multiple tiers of service [on the Internet]. ... I want the telcos and the cable companies ...to work out a way to exchange traffic at multiple quality of service levels."  But what he really wants is the right to buy off Internet providers to ensure that HDnet's video web content works faster and better than video from other sites.

Common Cause members generated more than 65,000 letters to Cuban and the greedy executives of major telecom companies calling on them to keep the Internet free and open to everyone.  Now Cuban is accusing us of "spamming" him.  Please take a moment to visit his blog and explain to him in your own words why you care about the innovative, freewheeling nature of the Internet and want to see net neutrality protected.

Click here to enter your comments to Mark Cuban.

And on behalf of the entire media team here at CC, thanks for helping make our net neutrality campaign a success.


Tags: Media and Democracy, Net Neutrality, Mark Cuban (all tags)


Display:

Your activism is paying off :: 4 Comments

Spam?

He's got a strange definition of spam. I thought spam was a single email sent from an anonymous address to many recipients on a subject they probably don't care about. (Check the definitions at dictionary.com or wikipedia and you'll see that they agree with me.)

But what he got was a lot of emails from a lot of people; the emails went to him and a small handful of other recipients; and they were on a subject he is very much interested in and involved with. If anything, that's the opposite of spam. (And if spam is inherently bad, then maybe the opposite of spam is pretty good?)

by Dave Algoso on Thu Mar 09, 2006 at 12:26:40 PM EST


How Has Our Activism 'Paid Off'?

This back and forth with Cuban is amateur hour. How, exactly, has sending letters to him and asking others to act as Common Cause shills on his blog advanced the network neutrality issue?  Why are you wasting this guy's time? He has no real voice in the network neutrality debate. He is neither the Chief Executive of a major ISP nor is he a member of Congress. Shouldn't we be focusing our efforts there rather than putting silly devil horns on the heads of irrelevant people. What exactly has that proven? C'mon. You underestimate our intelligence and it's insulting.

by Kathy on Fri Mar 10, 2006 at 10:03:43 PM EST


So is this some sort of Democrat's site?

There's no doubt that you guys are instigating a spam campaign.

If you go to answers.com you'll see that the definition of spamming is unsolicited email.

Did Marc Cuban solicit all this email?

by Hone Watson on Sun Mar 12, 2006 at 05:56:03 PM EST


in rebuttal....

Kathy, regarding how this has advanced issue: Net neutrality is kind of geeky (sorry, Dawn, but it's true), so if we want to get people's attention then we need to do more than just state why we think it's important. Sometimes it takes a goofy stunt (like putting silly devil horns on someone) to stir up an issue. It gets people talking about it.

Hone, regarding this being a spam campaign: You're being selective in your definition. "Unsolicited email" is not the complete definition from answers.com, and I think most people would agree that spam is more than that. How much of the email that you get is solicited? When I send a message to a friend, is that spamming because he didn't ask me to email him? Mark Cuban may not like the email he got, but that doesn't make it spam. (And regarding whether this is a "Democrat's" site: No. What's that have to do with anything?)

by Dave Algoso on Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 04:04:55 PM EST


You are not logged in.

In order to post a comment, you must be logged in. If you have a member account, please log in to comment.

If not, you can make an account just by filling out the form below. It's quick and free.


contact us | volunteer/intern programs | employment opportunities | site map | privacy policy