If democracy is the right of the people, ALL the people, to rule themselves, then not only should the weak be treated equally under the law, but there should also be limits on what the powerful can do. In any free system there will be those who gain wealth and power, rising above the rest of the herd. That power can be used to overwhelm the system and force outcomes to go in their favor. In a democracy, that should not be allowed.
In the arena of economics, a monopoly is able to overwhelm the system of normal market forces, and impose its will on those who use it. That is why in 1974 the United States Department of Justice filed an antitrust law suit against AT&T, finally bringing down the Ma Bell phone monopoly in 1982. Telephone service had become not just a luxury for rich people, but rather an integral part of everyday life and economic transactions for the entire population. The Bell monopoly in this case had become the enemy of democracy, no longer serving its customers as the market demanded, but rather dictating prices and services, without the free enterprise limits of competition.
As technology changes, new areas for human interaction arise. And because there is no legal precedent, these new technical landscapes become vulnerable to exploitation by the rich and powerful.
No sooner had the government reined in the phone company, than a new network was born which would so far surpass the phone company in the scope of its integration into normal human affairs as to make it seem insignificant by comparison: the Internet.
Ever since the Internet moved out of the realm of a 'cooperative exchange of information tool' for the military and education, and moved full bore into the realm of commercial landscape, the powerful have been slavering to get control of it. Not just to use it to sell things, but to literally get their fingers on the switch. If you are allowed to control the switch, you can limit where the customer can go, you can limit what the customer can consume, you can force your prices and opinions on those who have to use your system to transact their exchanges, and find their information.
Think of the possibilities this power could open to those who held it. Of course the obvious one is to increase their income. If you can no longer stream your movies from Netflix for under 10$ per month, you'll end up paying for the movie service from Comcast for $30 per month instead. Comcast wins because they control whether or not you can even get to the Netflix service. But that is only the beginning. What about public opinion? What about politics? What about law? If you control what people are able to consume, you control public opinion and eventually everything else.
But our telecommunications companies would never do anything like that to us would they? As if they knew it was wrong, in the early days, the telecoms began to surreptitiously make little experiments like adding packets to torrent streams to slow uploads and downloads of private individuals. Comcast famously slowed Netflix traffic prior to rate negotiations. And those are only a few of the known early encroachments. Since it is difficult to detect, packet manipulation on a network is often completely hidden, especially if no one is looking for it.
The Internet has become the market place of the new millennium. It is the market place of thought as well as commerce. And those who provide our access to it, should never be allowed to determine where we go, or what we buy, or what speech we use.
The term Net Neutrality was coined by Columbia University media law professor Tim Wu in 2003. It is the principle that the Internet should remain open and that those who provide access must not influence the traffic on the network. In other words, you pay for a certain amount of Internet usage, and you can use it to go anywhere you want to go.
In the end of 2013, president Obama appointed Tom Wheeler, a Washington D. C. lobbyist for the telecoms, to the position of chairman of the FCC. The FCC is the regulatory commission with jurisdiction over the Internet. Mr. Wheeler immediately set about to dismantle any rules restricting the telecoms and forever destroy our chances of having a free Internet. But Tom got his education when the FCC solicited public comment on the issue and received the largest ever response in the commission's history.
John Oliver, HBO personality, Internet phenomenon, comedian and commentator, during this perilous time, produced one of the most informative and influential episodes of his career, exposing this move by the power brokers, and calling on the public to get involved. If you haven't seen this piece of humorous but educational rhetoric, you owe it to yourself and to our democracy to watch it. I must warn my readers that Mr. Oliver is extremely irreverent and the video may be offensive to those who have no tolerance for obscene language. If you can overlook this kind of behavior to see the message of democratic freedom he's advocating, please take the time to watch.
Four million private citizens took time to tell the FCC to hold the Internet providers accountable and to keep the Internet open for all users.
President Obama took note of the public indignation and substantially changed his stand on Net Neutrality, calling for the FCC to classify telecom Internet providers as "common carriers". The FCC bowed to the president and public opinion, giving us the American people one of the greatest wins for democracy since the American revolution.
Not surprisingly, companies like Comcast and Verizon have been spending gargantuan budgets on lobbying congress to reverse the open Internet rules imposed by the FCC. And sure enough on April 15th of 2016, the day we all pay our taxes, our elected officials in the House of Representatives in Washington D. C., stabbed us in the back, and passed a bill that would allow Internet providers to break out of those very restrictions. If you live in a locality where your Representative voted to give away your Internet freedom, you should be hopping mad. At this writing, the senate has not yet voted on the bill, and I still have hope that it will be defeated.
As you can see, our Internet freedom, which now amounts to our public activity freedom and our freedom of speech, is hanging by a thread. Unless individual citizens are vigilant to stay abreast of what is happening and be willing to call their congress men and women when the urgency arises, we will lose this precious freedom.
Republicans in particular need to get involved. I've been a Republican all my adult life, and I believe this should be a Republican issue. Isn't our freedom at the core of Republican values? If you're a Republican, please talk with your Republican friends, party associates, and office holders.
Here is a link to a site where you can contact your senators. They need to hear from you right now regarding this heinous bill HR2666 :
U. S. Senate: http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/#
I would also like to recommend a couple of organizations that are fighting for Internet freedom. I urge you to sign up for their newsletters and support them financially.
FreePress: http://www.freepress.net/
Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://www.eff.org/
If you don't sign up for these newsletters, how will you know when the redcoats are coming to take your freedom? If you don't call your congress persons, how will we preserve our free Internet? Become a Net Neutrality activist. Save the Internet!
