I started a small literary magazine in 2009, on the promise that digital communications had created for minority interests to find their audience and grow together. I have worked in literary publishing for over thirty years, and in all that time I had been contemplating such a magazine and preparaing for it, but until the dawn of digital communication I had no opportunity to make it a reality. My magazine has been well received by writers and readers. It is utterly dependent on a free and open internet to find its audience. It is the quality of my work alone, and not any corporate or financial muscle behind it, that gains it a hearing; my work wouid quickly be crushed if it were forced down the ladder by the growing publishing monolopies with the cash to buy first place in the internet.
As you know the arts and ideas are threatened on all sides by monopolizing forces that threaten the free exchange of ideas. Artists, critics, and thinkers, in the digital environment, can no longer count on making a living from their work or on the support of institutions like publishing houses, record companies, movie companies, that opt to put their aesthetic or intellectual values ahead of the bottom line. Such institutions are being slowly destroyed. All we have going for us now is a free and open internet. Take this from us, and our culture is in the grip of majoritarian corporate interests. I beg you, in the interests of culture and also of liberty and quality of thought, to protect the internet from going up for sale and to keep it as a vital resource for the people.
For more information: https://www.battleforthenet.com/