Imagine if your power company could decide that they would only provide power for a certain brand of appliances and that they could make that decision because a particular appliance company paid them for it. Your choice would be to go without those appliances or buy the brand you have been effectively directed to buy. In the United States, shopping for a new power company is not even an option.
Now, imagine your government has the right to decide that one delivery company did not have to obey the speed limits while all others would be required to adhere to a 20 m.p.h. speed limit at all times. Neither you nor those other companies can decide to use different roads. You are stuck with the slower delivery service of the company of your choosing, or you can pick the one that does not have to follow the same rules as everybody else. Again, they have probably paid for that ability.
If this seems like an extreme, crazy, unrealistic, alarmist exaggeration of a future where citizens and consumers are deprived of the basic economic choices that we currently make every day, then you are wrong. While my analogies are not perfect, the future on our doorstep is actually much more terrifying.
Ajit Pai, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and human embodiment of “regulatory capture,” is proposing the end of rules guaranteeing what is called “Net Neutrality.” Setting aside for the moment all of the disingenuous and downright dishonest gamesmanship that Pai’s FCC has engaged in over the public commenting on Net Neutrality and the supposed DDoS attacks by proponents of Net Neutrality against the commenting process, Pai’s proposal seems poised to have significant and detrimental effects on American consumers and the American democracy.
Pai is proposing allowing internet service providers (ISPs) to prioritize web traffic as they see fit. That means they would be able to slow down data to and from particular websites or web services to the point where your ISP could essentially dictate your internet usage. That means they could decide: where you shop, what you buy, what video(s) you watch, where you watch it, who you talk to, what games you play, how you play them, on what platform you play them, where you get your news, where you look for jobs, and what devices you use to access the internet.
But wait! There is more.
Because of the increasing consolidation of communications and related industries, there is a good chance that your ISP is also the provider of your cable or satellite TV package. There would be nothing to stop, for example AT&T (providers of UVerse and Direct TV) of making it basically impossible for cord-cutters to access Netflix or Hulu. Same is true for Comcast, owners of NBC, and for Verizon, who provide TV through their FIOS service. In other words, these companies will be able to use their de facto monopolies to make it impossible for competition to exist.
The this anti-competition problem extends beyond the communication and entertainment industries though. Many small businesses and start up companies rely on their internet presence for survival. These types of businesses stand no chance in an economy where larger competitors can pay to cripple their web traffic and cut them off at the knees before they get started.
The only people who benefit from the eradication of Net Neutrality are the ISPs. We are forced to rely select ISPs for nearly all aspects of our daily lives. In terms of its importance in modern America, it is on the same level as power, water, and roads. Without Net Neutrality, the internet essentially becomes the private property of those ISPs, private property that they can sell off, rent out, evict people or entities from, and censor at will. Ajit Pai wants YOUR access to information to be determined by the highest bidder, be it a company looking to sell you something or an interest or political action group looking to influence politics.
The level of greed that Pai wants to empower is dangerous to the fundamental stability of American democracy and the American free press, two things already increasingly under attack. There are no Republicans or Democrats on this issue. Whether you get your news from Occupy Democrats, InfoWars, MSNBC, Fox News or The Onion, you need to care about this. This is an America issue. No american should stand for this. No american should be quiet about this. Every american should be scared and angry as hell about this. Most importantly, no american should be idle about this.
Call your representatives and senators. Call the FCC. Call your newspaper. Talk to anybody who will listen. Educate yourself. Find a way to help fight.
No comments:
Post a Comment