Check out the deceptive animation, which attempts to paint the SavetheInternet.com Coalition as disheveled, hot-headed socialists . . .

And read about the real ramifications to political freedom and organizing soon to be squelched when the web becomes the private domain of the corporate state.

Coming to a blog near you is a telecom-sponsored advertisement dressed up as an underground cartoon. It’s the latest in the ongoing campaign by large phone companies to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public.

The cartoon is a product of a front group funded by AT&T and BellSouth. The group, Hands Off the Internet, is headed by Mike McCurry, the former Clinton Press Secretary who has been widely discredited for selling out his integrity to become the telephone industry’s spokesmodel. McCurry’s group is now spending tens of thousands of dollars to infiltrate the blogosphere with their telco-friendly message.

The ad and the animation it links to are a classic example of Steven Colbert’s “truthiness.” Telco giants cloak their real interests behind an emotional and populist message that looks genuine on the surface, while attacking the work of the real free speech, public and consumer advocates at SavetheInternet.com.

No where throughout this propaganda do they identify the nation’s largest telecom companies as the money behind the production. Instead, they dress up www.dontregulate.org as an authentically amateur effort — complete with hand-drawn cartoons, a scraggly, counter-culture net-guy as protagonist and a David vs. Goliath subtext.

They frame the issue as pitting corporations against the people, the rich guy against you, and stifling bureaucracy against the free market. They even give the URL a “dot-org” tag to cover their corporate tracks.

Read the full report from Timothy Karr’s post on Media Citizen Here