Here’s How We Can Likely Save Net Neutrality

NetflixEverything you hate about your cable company is about to happen to the Internet. What’s worse is that you’ll hate this much more. Fortunately, there’s hope.

Likely you’ve been hearing much about the death of net neutrality around the proverbial water cooler lately, and in case you are not already aware, net neutrality is basically the ethical agreement that all traffic on the Internet be treated equally, that all downloads, uploads and streams (all Internet activity as you conceive it) should receive the same conditions for reaching the public, free of corporate manipulation and bullying. It is for that reason that bloggers can compete for the same audience as major national media outlets while sipping coffee in their bathrobes.

Net neutrality is open, fair, and allows for innovation to come from any portion of the populous. Even more importantly, it allows for the free and open transfer of both information and communication on a global scale. That is far too important to lose to shoddy government oversight and ever-dubious corporate agendas.

But in an era when more and more are starting to consider access to the Internet a basic human right, acknowledging those without access to be at an extreme disadvantage compared to the rest of the population, the GOP, along with their incestuous corporate family, have aimed (and for the time being, succeeded) at demolishing net neutrality altogether in favor of a corporate, restrictive, profiteering racket that allows companies such as Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast to strip their customers from such a right while collecting ever-higher fees for the “service.”

The GOP’s argument is merely their usual foot-stomping, claiming hilariously that an open and fair Internet for all stifles competition. They worry behind their piles of money as to how they can possibly snake and swindle their way through the mild FCC regulations, whimpering that their golden balloon can’t fly so high as long as it has that pesky string attached to it, though it floats far above all our heads already. “No string is long enough!” they shout once they get worked up (and they’re always worked up.)

Democrats, so far, appear to be in support of maintaining net neutrality arguing that large ISPs maintain near monopolies on service in many areas of the country.

But now that there’s no string left those balloons will fly high out of sight, just as our bills for Verizon and Comcast’s “new” and “improved” services will. What folks can view, see, read, listen to and how fast (if at all) is open to the corporate preference and agenda of such dubious companies and their pocketed political finger-puppets. Can Americans really continue to cast a sideways eye at countries like North Korea if we begin to allow corporate interests to rule and censor our very sense of the world, if not our entire realities?

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings

Losing net neutrality is so much more dangerous than simply getting slower access to YouTube videos or only being able to choose from partnered video-retail and streaming companies. Forget all that drivel and consider the extent of power corporations will have when they control the land you live on, the food you eat, the air you breathe, the water you drink and bathe with, the schools in your neighborhoods and the very information you can access from day to day. There is much at stake; do not allow this issue to be marginalized or undercut by trivial, surface arguments, which are designed to lull the public into disinterest.

Why, then, do we still have a chance at preserving net neutrality even as it has been stripped naked and left before the wolves of Wall St.?

Because you can’t put the genie back in the bottle — Pandora’s box has been open too long. The public won’t stand for it, and if that is not enough to get Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T quaking in their monocles, many large corporations that will be affected adversely by ISPs’ greedy grab for money, power, and control of the virtual world — companies like Netflix — will join consumers in the fight.

Neflix CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells wrote in a letter to investors regarding the demise of net neutrality:

Were this draconian scenario to unfold with some ISP… we would vigorously protest and encourage our members to demand the open Internet they are paying their ISP to deliver.

In the same letter, Netflix underlined its strength amongst consumers by announcing that it’s costumer base now exceeds 34 million Americans — a 23 percent rise over the previous year — comprising almost a third of the Internet’s overall traffic during peak hours.

The popular video-streaming company also stated that their service encourages consumers toward ISPs and that it is in the majority’s interest for the two industries to work cooperatively. Speaking to that point, Hastings and Wells wrote:

Consumers purchase higher bandwidth packages mostly for one reason: high-quality streaming video.

So how do we save and preserve net neutrality?

Solidarity.

Consumers need to band together, write letters, organize boycotts and petitions, begin to create alternative, cooperative ISPs. Corporations cannibalized by the new system need to band together and exert pressure in every available and necessary crook, crack, and cranny in the system. Public officials aiding in the demise of net neutrality need to be recalled or voted out of office. And most importantly, as well as most unusually, consumers and cannibalized companies under the new system need to stand together, back each other up, and never stop fighting to preserve net neutrality. This is a fight we cannot afford to lose, the ramifications of which most, if not all, have yet to begin to see, much less consider.

As net neutrality likely fights to appeal, and as the country continues to monitor the issue right up to the federal Supreme Court, let us reflect on our potential losses in this deal and begin to rapidly organize. After all, what does the average American gain by this, anyway? — a great question to lob at the GOP as we approach the 2014 elections.

(Reprinted from Occupy Democrats.)

Edited/Published by: SB