Net Neutrality Fight Isn’t About Saving Internet Freedom, It’s About Saving Internet Commerce

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http://www.alternet.org/media/net-neutrality-fight-isnt-about-saving-internet-freedom-its-about-saving-internet-commerce


John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight, talking about net neutrality.
Photo Credit: YouTube.com

Net neutrality, as comedian John Oliver said on his HBO show, may be the worst-named cause ever. Besides being “completely boring,” it refers to “all data being treated equally no matter who creates it and why the Internet is a weirdly level playing field.”

Like many Internet activists, Oliver has been urging all conscientious citizens to tell the Federal Communications Commission to leave the net alone. Go file online comments before Friday's deadline, he urges, and don’t allow cable companies to charge content creators different prices for sending data at different speeds, which might disadvantage a NetFlix or Facebook or Google.

“What’s being proposed is so egregious that activists and corporations are being forced onto the same side,” Oliver said. “That’s basically Lex Luther knocking on Superman’s apartment door and saying, listen, I know we have our differences, but...."

This is entertaining, but very misleading. It is a myth that Internet service is now free and open and equal and somehow utopian. It’s not—just look at the varied packages sold to consumers. Look at what you have at home. If you don’t like your DSL, you can pay more for cable or a fiber optic plan. There’s nothing equalitarian or utopian there.

[RobertEarl]

1. It goes deeper than that

The basic delivery can be free. But the specializations cost.

The real problem is the country does not have free everywhere, and if neutrality goes down we never will.

The net should be nationalized like our freeways.