The Battle for Net Neutrality: Corporate Takeover or Opportunity?

[Echo In Light]

Published on Sunday, April 11, 2010 by Women's International Perspective
The Battle for Net Neutrality: Corporate Takeover or Opportunity?
by Megan Tady

On Tuesday, April 6th a federal court decision put the Internet, and your ability to use it, in jeopardy. It's a major setback for free speech online and for the prospects of connecting the entire country to broadband.

The Washington DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lacks the current authority to enforce rules that keep Internet service providers from blocking and controlling Internet traffic - a principle called Net Neutrality.

The court ruled in favor of the Internet service provider Comcast, which was caught blocking the file sharing service BitTorrent in 2007 and contested the FCC's attempts to stop the company. The decision makes it nearly impossible for the FCC to follow through with plans to create strong Net Neutrality protections that keep the Internet out of the hands of corporations. Additionally, without authority over broadband, the FCC could be unable to implement portions of its just released National Broadband Plan designed to bridge the digital divide.

Millions of Internet users don't realize that a battle over the future of the Internet is being played out right now in Washington D.C. On one side are public interest and consumer groups, small businesses, Internet entrepreneurs, librarians, civil libertarians and civil rights groups. They want to preserve the Internet as it is - the last remaining open communications platform where anyone with access and a computer can create and consume online content. The principle of "Network Neutrality" is what makes this open communications possible. Net Neutrality is what allows us to go wherever we want online.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/11-4

[ejpoeta]

1. imagine what it would do to competition if these internet providers could decide who gets what.

their competitors for phone, say, could be slowed right down. where are all these supposed proponents of small business who claim to want the small businesses to thrive... how can they thrive when the internet is so important for their business and verizon or time warner or whoever is providing the service could decide to control their bandwith or who can get to their site. or how about if a big corporation could pay more to get better faster internet and kill the competition that way. who cares though.... isn't tiger wood doing something. people don't understand it so they dont pay attention.

[samplegirl]

2. Nothing more than a corporate takeover.

K&R

[Echo In Light]

3. In keeping w/all things American

[Enthusiast]

6. Since the HCR debate

it appears to me that corporations always win.

[Echo In Light]

13. Been that way for decades. Ever see the movie Network (1976)?

Fantastic scene describing our so called representative democracy:

Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE!

Arthur Jensen: Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those *are* the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused...

[Enthusiast]

15. Very well.

But, corporate influence/abuse, and the damage they do, has never been more blatant. Look at the abuses during the Iraq War and the oil speculation that drove the prices up to $146/barrel. And look at the predatory lending and wholesale theft by Wall Street. And the Citizens United V. Federal Elections Commission decision was the most egregious act ever-in handing over power to the corporations.

So, while you are certainly correct, that it has been that way for decades, now it is right in your face and more destructive than ever. We have seen a snow ball effect.

[Overseas]

4. K&R . //nt

[AndyA]

5. These greedy companies are just looking for a new source of revenue.

They want to charge for the same thing twice.

People who use these companies as their Internet service provider ALREADY PAY for access. Now these companies want to be able to charge a "blackmail fee" to individual sites for preferential treatment. And that's exactly what it is: blackmail. Pay us, or your site slows down or gets blocked.

If certain sites are sped up, that means by default others must slow down. So, all the big sites pay the blackmail and drown out the smaller sites, unless they too play the game.

Look for more sites to go pay only, where you must pay for access, or to just flat out disappear as their revenue stream dries up.

This is about greed. The same kind of greed Wall Street had when it ran the worldwide economy into the toilet. The same kind of greed that has given Americans fewer choices, less competition, and made things more expensive.

This is a really, really bad idea and it must be killed. Dead. Dead. Dead.

[Echo In Light]

7. .

[Lucian]

8. If my ISP starts blocking sites and making me pay for some...

I'm dropping my service. I'm not going to go online and be limited as to where I can and can't go. And I can see many other people doing the same thing all over the country. No one is going to put up with this.

[Echo In Light]

9. .

[Uncle Joe]

10. The attacks against anonymity and Net Neutrality are all motivated as a means of reasserting

corporate control over the American People.

Thanks for the thread, Echo In Light.

[leftstreet]

11. K&R

[strategery blunder]

12. I'm dumping Comcast in response to the court decision

My new ISP activates service on Wednesday; I dump Comcrap on Thursday...AND I WILL LET THEM KNOW WHY :D

[Echo In Light]

14. .