Net Neutrality

 Well, it's a rainy Thursday in February. Peering out the windows, the world is white noise made of water while the tree branches beat a merry tune on the building. And here we are, looking at net neutrality, a particular hot button issue over the last few years. 

Let's do this in layman's terms. The internet, at least since Net 2.0, has been a constant. You pay for access to whatever provider worked best for you, but after that you could go anywhere and do anything. Welcome to the Internet, as Bo Burnham would say. But there is a significant threat to this way of doing things. 

Net Neutrality is "the principle that the companies who provide access to the internet (so-called “internet service providers”, or ISPs) cannot block or throttle internet traffic, or prioritize their business partners or other favorite web sites or services." (source) Comcast or AT&T, for instance, can't partner with Hulu so that it has the highest speeds and then throw Netflix back to dial-up speeds artificially. They can't block Tumblr because they disagree with its content. They can't make speeds crawl on a particular website because it hasn't paid its "membership fee". Net Neutrality means an even playing field for all content on the web when it comes to the companies who make it available to the consumer.

Under the Trump administration, the regulations that keep the internet neutral were discarded, a move backed by the major corporations who wanted that control. If they can throttle, they can rent, and therefore make more money in sponsorships, partnerships, and levels of membership on both sides. (source) And this decision has not been popular with one political party or another. 83 percent of Republicans disagreed with this corporocratic decision, and the Democratic spectrum tested higher than that.

And this all feeds into some of the monopoly questions currently important in our country. Some of these providers have their hands in the production of entertainment as well. In fact, there are comparatively few companies that control the vast majority of our entertainment, and giving them carte blanche to further control what we watch, read, and intake strengthens their collective monopoly. (source) Think about this - if you have Netflix or Amazon Prime, you are presented with what you're supposed to watch. It recommends things to you, and you're confronted with ads for those things over and over. It looks good, and you watch it. What about the things that did not get the same attention? Were you told what to watch? What did you miss because of it? And what about the hundreds of thousands of titles that aren't carried at any given point in time? Make no mistake, our intake is curated, and sometimes we even ask for it, such as the new "Recommend a book" service provided by BookIt or Likewise, which usually charge authors to be listed on the site. 

In 2016 the UN General Assembly passed a non-binding Resolution that declared internet access a human right. (source) It's hard to imagine this to be a debate - who could want their internet throttled and their information controlled? This is a people vs. corporation debate, and while there are some countries who are staunchly for net neutrality, like France (source), the US is showing its knickers. With 39% of rural folk without reliable access to the internet (I am writing to you on satellite that I pay twice as much for than you probably do and it runs about like early cable internet), 41% of tribal people going without, and 66% out in the territories, that means about 1 in 10 people don't yet have access to the internet, which is absolutely vital in our society. (source)

This is, plain and simple, a money grab. It is corporations who already have enough money deciding to squeeze more money out of the average person because they provide a vital resource. It is no different than raising the price of water or electricity arbitrarily. It is no less vital than the housing crisis. Net Neutrality must be preserved at all costs, and it is time to tell the corporations no. 

Just no. 

And because this week has gotten me hot, and next week we'll cover the digital divide, and hopefully that will be less stressful, here is a cat on a computer who looks about as done with these shenanigans as I am.