My contribution to the OpenInternet call for comments today (first diary as well)! Follow below the mystic orange spiral.
They've got us where they want us: dependent on the Internet for almost any activity of daily life. Shopping, education, applying for jobs, connecting with friends, connecting with strangers, pursuing a hobby, planning a night out or a trip, funding a cause or project, reading a map or cooking a damn meal all usually involve some clicks and rapid-fire typing. So much of human knowledge is available at our fingertips like never before, and there's no turning back time. The crusade to kill net neutrality is just as blatant a corporate power grab as Citizens United; both strip away any pretense and flat-out say "big money writes our laws."
We are never going back to the provincial world of yesterday. Picture a small town 30 years ago. If you have an interest in, say, Italian cuisine, what are your options? Look at library books, hope there is a show on PBS, see if there are Italians nearby to learn from (there aren't). Travel to Chicago, New York, or hey, to Italy. Leave your town, because the knowledge you seek is not to be had there, and your lasagna is inauthentic and/or disgusting. In 2014, open up the Internet on your PC or phone, and watch thousands of videos from Italian master chefs, get tips from Italian grandmas on message boards, order authentic spices from a spice market, watch travelogues, and see pasta being made. Heck, you can even learn the ruggero. Now that's-a spicy meatball!
But in 2015, try the same web searches. You can get to some sites pretty easily, but others load slowly, or not at all. You can't seem to find that spice market, even in the phone directory. Your search results for pasta bring up only one brand. What happened? Simple, a corporation (or crime family, as we used to call them) has given AT&T the payola. Everyone else who can't match the bid is out of luck. Nonna Maria won't be able to tell you to save some of that pasta cooking water, in case the dish gets a little dry.
If you went to the library in 1981 to find a book called "The Killing of Karen Silkwood," you might be told that book was unavailable. "Okay, put me on the waiting list," you say. The librarian tells you, "Sorry, we don't have that book, because Kerr-McGee made a big contribution to our funding and they asked us to provide these books instead called 'Plutonium & You: A Match Made in Heaven' and 'How Unions Are Stealing Your Paycheck.'" Sound outrageous? That's exactly what they're trying to do to us today.
Let me point out to you right now, this morning I didn't know the title of a book about Karen Silkwood, or the names of Italian folk dances. I learned about Silkwood's murder a few years ago when I was reading Wikipedia, trying to figure out how Meryl Streep got so famous and acclaimed. I learned about the Khmer Rouge genocide when I was researching a US/Cambodian indie rock band I heard of in an email newsletter. The band, Dengue Fever, paid tribute to musicians who were killed by Pol Pot's reign of terror. They didn't teach us about Pol Pot in school. They should have. I read the survivors' accounts, listened to the golden voice of Ros Sereysothea, and wept. How could this have happened in my parents' lifetime? Why didn't the world stop it? Did they know? If we didn't have Net Neutrality, I might never have found the band or the history. All that would come up searching for Dengue Fever might be a major pharmaceutical brand. Not because anyone is trying to suppress information, but because survivors of this particular holocaust just don't have the pay-to-play money to give Comcast. How about the hundreds of BOINC projects that are advancing scientific research? The universities aren't paying my provider a premium on the bandwidth, but Paramount Pictures is! SETI@home will slow to a crawl, but you can watch all the Transformers movies lightning-fast! With links to the toys and soundtrack!
Don't you see, the Internet is for people to share their experiences, become better informed and LEARN. I understand it is also for commerce, but we can't let those interests dictate the very basis of how the technology works. There isn't enough money in the world to justify that. In a better world, we wouldn't have for-profit Internet or utility providers at all. In a better world, Cambodians in 1975 could have been tweeting and Instagramming the outrageous actions of their regime, and the genocide could have been stopped in its tracks.
The United Nations Human Rights Council has more and more clearly been defining the right to Internet access in terms of the right to freedom of speech, the right to development, and the right to freedom of assembly. (Just read it on Wikipedia, FTW!) Nowhere does it say, "as underwritten by our richest clients."
Whew. That's my understanding of the situation.