shouting loudly

PK’s Stevens MP3 hits blogosphere

Last Wednesday, June 28, during the network neutrality debate at the markup of Sen. Ted Stevens’ massive telecom bill, many of us at Public Knowledge listened anxiously to the streaming audio from the Hill. I placed my digital voice recorder on Alex Curtis’ PowerBook speaker so that we could get audio of the event.

Ted Stevens just embarassed himself, displaying his ignorance of internet architecture in an angry tirade against net neutrality. As just one example, he claimed that an email took five days to reach him because the internet’s “tubes” were plugged up with video.

This was too good to pass up, so we decided to make a blog post. Little did we know it would take off so well…

I edited the audio down, extracted Stevens’ diatribe, and sent the MP3 to Scott Burns, staff technologist. Alex featured the MP3 in a blog entry.

Thanks to a tip from PK media point man Art Brodsky, 27B Stroke 6, a Wired Blog, picked up the story and transcribed some of Stevens’ insanity here. Stories at BoingBoing, DailyKOS, Slashdot, and dozens more followed.

I was initially upset that 27B Stroke 6 and DailyKOS linked to this URL: http://media.publicknowledge.org/stevens-on-nn.mp3. (If you click on it, you don’t see the blog post; you just hear the embedded audio.) Many blogs simply credit 27B Stroke 6. To their credit, DailyKOS explicitly credited PK for hosting the MP3.

UPDATE: In response to an email (that was a bit too angry on my part), Ryan Singel has been good enough to update his blog post at 27B Stroke 6. Here is part of his quite congenial email:

Thanks for the message. While I thought the Senator’s comments were humorous, I hardly expected it to take off the way it did.

As for a link back to the original page, I plead guilty and will update it momentarily and do wish that I had attributed the story better to Public Knowledge.

Just so you know, Art didn’t call me or even send me an email personally. He simply sent out a press release to the press list which read, in full:

“For those who couldn’t get through to the markup yesterday, Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens was in fine form explaining the nuances of Internet policy. Here’s the link for his opening remarks, delivered after Sen. Snowe had delivered a calm, rational defense of Net Neutrality: http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/497″

So now we’re all on the same page. I wish I’d taken care of this earlier!

UPDATE 2: The Stevens MP3 has also been posted at Technology Liberation Front. I wish they had credited PK, but ultimately, I’m glad to see the meme spreading.

Thanks to fellow PK intern Tim Schneider for the TLF tip.

UPDATE 3: This thing has not yet reached Fark cliche status yet, but if this glut of Fark feedback is any indicator, it might get there.

So far, it has inspired no less than 3 songs, 2 videos, and a t-shirt design. See Tim Schneider’s PK post for more: Mr. Stevens’ wild ride, through a “series of tubes”

The top “series of tubes” post at ytmnd has over 22,000 views. This also includes a few song loops, accompanied by a stammering Senator Stevens.

I just hope that, in all this, the message about net neutrality doesn’t get lost in laughter. Go to savetheinternet.com for more.