Here is why Net Neutrality should matter to you. Before Youtube, mass exposure came only to those who could afford to buy airtime. So, the closest you got to a voice of the little guy on TV was infomercials. Back in the early 90s, I watched Manufacturing Consent, and when that movie pointed out that five corporations controlled the vast majority of the media, I realized that I could never trust the news to tell me the unfiltered truth. This was no soviet-style censorship, mind you - just filters that got applied, which set the parameters for what was viewed as legitimate discussion, and what was simply talkin red. But since Youtube, different rules apply. In 1994, the best that Russell Brand could hope for in terms of talking back to Fox would be an interview on their station, and perhaps on another station, and maybe an op-ed somewhere. Now, in making a Youtube response, Brand (or any of us) can hit pause on Fox, sit back, and take as long as he likes to make whatever point he needs to make, and Bill OReilly cannot cut his microphone, he cannot shout him down, he cannot do a damn thing, because Brand has his own platform, and we can choose to watch it or not, but what nobody can do is censor him, because this is the internet, where every voice is equally represented. Unless they kill Net Neutrality. What that basically means is that if they do it, the companies that provide internet access will be able to give preferential treatment to their own programming or websites - or to those who pay an extra fee. It will create a completely unnecessary, on a technological level, internet slow lane - one completely manufactured by a deliberate throttling of content that is not theirs. You know how diamonds are actually not rare at all, and only have such a high value because the DeBeers group has control of the entire world supply? Same idea, except with free speech - it also goes back to being too expensive for most of us. It will be the death of the internet as we know it. This is not hyperbole. A free, bandwidth-neutral internet is our best hope as far as humanity getting our own worst urges under control, and the FCC in the United States, who will set the tone for what follows, are considering allowing their oligarchs to seize control, once again, of who gets a voice in society. This shit matters, whether youre into Brand or nutjobs like Alex Jones - if youre into anything that does not capture the attention of the lowest common denominator, and you want to continue to have access to information about that, this matters to you. Free speech matters, and Net Neutrality *means* free speech.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 21:05:13 +0000
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