The Internet is the greatest invention in the history of the human race.
You don’t believe me? Well, what’s the capital of the Mexican state of Tabasco? If you are reading this article on WesternFrontOnline.net, then you can look it up with a few keystrokes. You will know the answer in 10 seconds flat.
If you were reading it in the dead-tree edition of this paper back in 1988, well you would have to go find a print encyclopedia, which you probably don’t have laying around in your dorm room. That’s a big hassle. You would ask your roommate and he would say, “Sauce! LOL!” Only he would have actually laughed out loud. He wouldn’t have said “el-oh-el.”
The printing press may have enabled one-to-many mass communication. The steam engine may have connected the Atlantic and Pacific. But the Internet enables many-to-many mass communication. It connects the Atlantic and Pacific to the Mediterranean, Caspian and South China Seas.
The sum of human knowledge is literally at your fingertips.
Anyone with the know-how and a small amount of cash can make their own Web site(I did). It’s the single most democratic method of mass communication ever devised.
Google this phrase: “net neutrality.” I can wait.
Sounds like a good idea, eh?
I suppose I’m going to have to explain it to people reading the dead-tree edition. Net neutrality is the idea that every byte of information that travels across the Internet is treated the same. It doesn’t matter if it is coming from a major corporation such as Disney or from a schmuck such as me. It’s basically the way the Internet is now and always has been.
But it’s not the way it always will be. There is a conflict going on over the net. The companies that run the high-speed Internet cables that make up the fibers of the World Wide Web don’t like the status quo. Like any company, they want to make more money than they are, and they are lobbying lawmakers to make sure that they can violate net neutrality when it suits their needs.
The reason this is happening now makes sense when you think about it. The Internet used to be run by phone companies. There are laws preventing phone companies from regulating what goes on over phone lines. Now it’s the cable TV companies who are in charge, and they can do pretty much whatever the hell they want.
Violating net neutrality can be done in many ways. They could simply censor the Internet for political reasons, such as the Chinese government (you can’t Google “democracy” in China). They could impede competitors from using the Internet (for example, imagine if Comcast blocked all Vonage and Skype traffic and allowed Comcast Digital Voice).
The most depressing scenario could simply be the imposition of a tiered Internet that looks more like cable TV than what we have today: you can choose between the “Basic Internet Package,” with access to a select group of Web sites that pay the cable provider exorbitant amounts for inclusion.
Only major media companies, such as Disney and Time Warner, would be able to afford to reach this audience. There would be higher tiers up from there, each with more Web sites and faster speeds. The Internet, as we know it today, would be dead.
Such a scenario is evil because it destroys the egalitarian nature of the Internet. It is the imposed oppression of “little guy” voices.
Unfortunately, it also makes perfect business sense. Unless net neutrality is codified into law, it will happen.
There is a bill going through Congress right now called H.R. 5997 that would protect the Internet from telecom companies. All it would do is make sure the Internet stays neutral. If you don’t believe me, you can read the full text here:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-5994.
If you want to throw away the human race’s greatest accomplishment and go back to the 80’s, you can sit around and do nothing.
If you want to save the Net, you should contact your Congressman. If you are registered to vote in Bellingham, that would be Rick Larson. His email is
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
By the way, the capital of Tabasco is Villahermosa.
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