Here is my own special letter to the FCC regarding Net Neutrality. Feel free to use bits as you see fit for phone calls, letters, translating into emoji or transforming into origami.
There are somewhat personal parts, specifically paragraphs 3-6, but it mostly is an expansive discussion about the importance of the internet to American society, particularly with regard to science and innovation. There is also a bit of legal history mixed in, as I am a scientist masquerading as an attorney.
I'm in Boston, so there's no reason for me to call my representatives, but not everyone lives down the street from MIT, and may exist in a less committed-to-technology political zone.
Equal access to an open Internet, Net Neutrality, is essential to some of our basic civil liberties including freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the right to petition. It is also critical to innovation in science and the creation of new companies and industries. The Internet is the nexus of advancement for our society in a way that the printing press was in the 15th century. Access to the Internet for anyone and everyone should be made as easy and as cheaply as possible. This will benefit all of us. Ending Net Neutrality will benefit a small number of powerful corporations at the expense of everyone else.
As the guardian of our basic civil liberties, the Supreme Court should have ruled that the Internet is a public utility. However, the current Justices of the Supreme Court made the wrong ruling. Not only is the internet is a public utility now, it has been for many years.
Like the members of the Supreme Court, I am an attorney. While the Court may have their clerks and staff do their research on Lexis/Nexis's or Westlaw's websites for them without the need to touch a keyboard, I have no such things. I am disabled. I have impaired mobility, and I depend on the Internet to do my job, communicate with the world beyond my room, and buy the necessities of life.
When my health deteriorated in a way that made it impossible for me to follow a typical attorney's schedule and reliably appear on time to meetings, I compensated by for these problems by using the Internet to teach myself four additional languages. You can work as an attorney from 8pm to 4am if you are the only one around to deal with litigation evidence in Dutch, French, German, and Spanish simultaneously.
Will foreign news sources such as Germany's Spiegel and Canada's La Presse be able to compete with behemoths like Disney determined to cram another Avengers movie into as many homes as possible? Will I be able to improve and maintain my linguistic skills that form the basis of my livelihood?
Will my employers continue to let me work from home if my home connection
is slowed down because the Koch Brothers have a hundred million to spend on
privileged Internet access to exercise their privilege to attack anyone anywhere who displeases them? As far as the Kochs are concerned, my entire state, Massachusetts, likely considered to be full of their enemies.
The world grows evermore interconnected. The Internet has amply proven its worth in transmitting information from the individual citizen on the scene to the news agency. Or to platforms that allow people to communicate what they believe is important that is not given attention by existing news sources.
This is also a world where the ability to communicate in more than one language is considered extremely important. Americans cannot hide behind "but they all have to learn English" attitude forever. We don't need additional barriers raised by an Internet dominated by English-language media giants more interested in entertaining than educating.
I am one of many people for whom the Internet is more important than the phone or television.
But you don't need to be disabled to need the Internet for your employment, your education, your pursuit of happiness, your right to free speech.
For people younger than myself, there has never been a world without an open Internet. For young people in many parts of the world, there will continue to be an open internet. This should remain true in the United States. It is important that this should remain true in the United States.
But perhaps we wish to maintain our position as the nation where money rules everything and can go anywhere.
We seem to be intent on regressing to a state of feudalism, where the wealthy have the right to do whatever they please within their domain. However, with modern technology, our feudal lords will be able to track everything we do.
Let us be clear: this is about power as well as money. The Internet has changed the balance of power over information more than any invention since the printing press. When that innovation was released to the world, the powers-that-were decried the access to ideas that the printing press would give to the ordinary person. Providing those rude commoners a means to express their ideas rather than receive them from their masters was a breach of the very hierarchy of the universe. And it was. Scientific innovation blossomed in the 16th century. Communication about world exploration spread as fast as possible. Political and religious dissent broke the power of the Catholic Church and the Spanish dominion over Europe.
The US used to lead the world in technological innovation, like the internet itself. This country's economy has benefited immensely from businesses based on the Internet: Google, Amazon, eBay, FaceBook, Netflix, and thousands of others. These success stories may be impossible to replicate if small start-up tech companies cannot access enough resources from the Internet due to their inability to pay as much as older companies with large amounts of money. Especially if those start-ups pose a threat to the powers controlling the Internet.
Basic science also depends on the Internet more and more. Researchers have vast databases of genetic sequences that can only be maintained, accessed, and compared via the Internet. So too with databases of chemicals of pharmacological potential. These are placed on the Internet so that anyone around the world can use them in freely in research. Potential breakthroughs in medicine and biology may never occur if research grants can't pay for enough Internet access to permit this sharing of data to continue. Even if they can pay, that payment will come at the cost of the research itself.
A similar tale of lost opportunities could be told for physics and astronomy, chemistry and geology, ecology and archaeology. Cheap access to vast amounts of data have resulted in major discoveries in all of these fields. Why slow scientific progress so that some companies can rake in a few billion more in profits than the billions they already make?
Allowing wealth to rule is as old an idea as can be, and is antithetical to innovation and to human rights. We have centuries of history to prove this - both the technological breakthroughs made by Americans given freedom to exchange information and the corrosive impact of rule by wealth. For the past 30 years, the Internet has been the prime enabler of innovation.
Around 100 years ago, the Supreme Court issued a number of seriously flawed
opinions regarding the ability of the wealthy to exploit the poor, to be shielded from liability by one-sided contracts, and false kowtows toward individual rights (of course children must have the right to work 12 hour days in dangerous factories). Our current court is doing the same. All we need is another major European war - what? we have one of those? no - yes war, but not major yet - and the recent economic crisis of 2008 may look like the Panic of 1907, compared to the Great Depression that may repeat.
Do what you can to ensure access to the Internet remains open to all, equally. An end to net neutrality would fundamentally change the Internet at the expense of freedom of information, freedom of speech, and scientific innovation. Our fundamental rights and our broader economy should not be strangled so that wealth and power can be further concentrated.
As President Obama said, "Simply put: No service should be stuck in a 'slow lane' because it does not pay a fee. That kind of gate keeping would undermine the level playing field essential to the Internet's growth." I urge you to act on the President's request to recategorize the Internet as a utility and protect equal access to information.