Controlling the Internet...?

Eliott Edge

During the last few days a sneak-mission on Capitol Hill passed "fake net neutrality"--a significantly compromised version of actual net neutrality. Although the Obama administration is calling it a victory for net neutrality, the new rules allow corporations to regulate the Internet in such a way that by 2011, you might not even recognize it at all. These new rules:

1. They enshrine different rules for wired and wireless Internet -- allowing big corporations to slow down or block websites and applications on your mobile phone.
   
2. They allow Internet service providers to set up tollbooths online, stifling new innovators who can't pay the fees the big corporations can.
   
3. For the first time, they embrace a tiered Internet -- a public Internet with publishing access for regular people vs. a private one controlled by major corporations, where they will shift future dollars for investment and innovation. In the new net, participation will based on the ability to pay corporate gatekeepers and not threatening their business interests. It will spell the end of the Internet as we know it.

Al Franken dropped everything this holiday season to help spread awareness on this issue:

Franken: “[new rules] Will make it easier for large media conglomerates like Comcast to do nothing short of controlling the Internet. The chairmen of the FCC is calling this a net neutrality proposal but lets be clear this is not real net neutrality…The internet was not created by corporations. It was created using tax payer dollars and it has dramatically altered our daily lives in more ways than any of us could ever have dreamed...This is the first time the FCC has ever allowed discrimination on the Internet. Let me give you an example maybe you like Google Maps – well tough. If the FCC passes this weak rule Verizon will be able to cut off access to Google Maps to the Google Maps Apps on your phone and force you to use their own mapping program Version Navigator even if its not as good even if they charge money…”

Without an open Internet we have no future. We only have “their” future.

Franken: “Net neutrality the First Amendment issue of our time… if we don’t protect Net Neutrality now how do think it will take before Comcast NBC Universal or Verizon CBS Viacom or ATT&T ABC DirecTV or BP Halliburton Wal-Mart Fox Dominos Pizza starts favoring its content over everyone else’s…If you want to protect the free flow of information in this country you have to help me fight this.”

A tried and true course of action in fighting these sorts of sorties is AN AVATAR-LINK AWARENESS CAMPAIGN, or simply a forced meme war. One changes their avatar to something relative to the problem. Type the words “internet censorship” into Google Images and then comb for a new avatar.You can also help make the issue a trend on Twitter. Link up with Save the Internet for other ideas about spreading awareness.

Though many of us romance over ending genocide, starvation, disease, ecocide, and other of the world’s problems, without a free and open Internet our ability to tackle these global issues as a community will return to the Victorian Age.