After a long struggle, it would appear that we are winning. Celebration rages on around the country over our recent victory regarding net neutrality. It appears the FCC will reclassify the internet as a common carrier, under Title II laws as requested by the general public. I have long been an advocate of doing exactly that, but I heard some disturbing news lately, and some third voices are starting to emerge from the shadows of the net. Voices I previously dismissed as republican disinformation trolls.
Last week I heard that the FCC is almost done drafting it's proposal for the new net neutrality laws, and the proposed law is over 200 pages long, and we cannot see it yet... sounds a little like the healthcare laws... So I hope I am just being paranoid when I ask myself, "Did we just empower the dark side by helping the FCC gain the power to micromanage the internet, or did we just save the internet from all the greedy corporations?" I think the answer is 'a little of both'.
Government has a tendency to destroy everything that it comes in contact with. The Middle East? Destroyed. Most people agree that Iraq was better off under Sadam's rule than it is now. Health Care? Again, destroyed. If only Obama had cared less, I would not be shelling out $500 a month out of pocket for prescriptions right now. How about... three letters: D.M.V. And democracy itself? Destroyed, utterly and fundamentally; democracy is now a superficial bunch of bullshit... I mean, come on... Jeb Bush vs Hillary Clinton? That's what you're saying it's coming down to? Where is the choice? Who in the right mind would even dare suggest that another Bush should occupy the Whitehouse? And Hillary? Yeah, you'd think America has a war hawk fetish. Don't fool yourselves, we are not that stupid. Democracy died in 1913, was buried in 1963, and today's generation is doing worse financially then the average American was in 1955.
One of my personal big problems with the FCC is that apparently the new Net Neutrality laws do not ban data caps on broadband lines. That was one of my biggest concerns. I consume almost a terabyte of data per month, and my household internet bill is about $75/mo. Yet, I can rent a VPS server in Europe and get not only the server, but another terrabyte of data transfer, for about $5 a month, and the internet connection is at least twice as fast! If I had to guess why that is, I'd say it's because US ISP's do not have any incentive to upgrade their infrastructure anymore. Internet connection speeds in the United States rank 34th in speed compared to the rest of the world. I also noticed that it was around the time that Verizon and Comcast started buying up all of the smaller ISP's, that the increases in data speed we were all enjoying came to a halt. I've been getting between 50 and 75 mbps for about 5 years now! Overseas, 100mbps is considered 'okay'. One of my Netherland servers has a 2 gigabit full duplex connection... and I pay $5 for that too.
So why are we so far behind, and will these new laws help? How did we find ourselves here to begin with? Will the FCC now simply slow progress down even more with classic bureaucratic fashion? Probably. Net Neutrality would not even be an issue if it was not so hard for new ISP's to enter the market. The customer would get they wanted if there was enough competition out there. I don't know why this was never a front-page issue before, but I realized recently that the problems we face now are purely the result of ISP monopoly. Nobody would give a shit if Comcast wanted to throttle, censor, or outright block certain services if there was more than Xfinity and Fios out there. People would just switch to a different provider. So maybe what we should have been fighting for is the right for new ISP's to more easily enter the market. Although it appears there will be at least one new company entering the market, guess who it is? Google, of course. I am not saying Google can't do it better than Verizon, or AT&T, but I am saying that someone else could probably do it even better, and they would all have to do better if there was more competition. So again, I am asking myself if I have been fighting the right battle.
Whenever you ask the government to protect you, loss of freedom is an inevitable side effect. We screamed for the FCC do something, and finally they have answered. But will they use this power to keep the internet open, or will they use it to micromanage the net, and try stupid tactics like blocking the bittorent ports on the central switches in some lame anti piracy effort? Who the hell knows. All I know is I am a little disturbed by the fact that the internet is about to be put in control of the US government, during a time of unprecedented Neocon control. With a completely Republican house and senate, at a time when Gitmo policy has gone domestic, and again... at a time when the media is trying to convince us that the only logical choices for president are Jeb and Hillary. And during a day and age when the only unbiased story you will ever find is on the internet, I have to ask... would we have been better off leaving it in the hands of capitalism?
I doubt it, considering corporations seem to have more control over us than the government that they own. I guess it's a catch 22. Another 'lesser of two evils' situation. Now do not get me wrong, obviously some enterprises must be subject to regulation. The mortgage crisis of 2008 is living proof that lack of regulation in certain industries is a fast path to disaster. And then one must remember that the internet has been under control of the FCC ever since its inception, and it's done pretty well. I just hope that we are preserving our rights, rather than giving the government even more power to promote lies, squelch decent, and manipulate public opinion.
So what should we do? We should make sure that the FCC is held accountable for any policies it implements, and any implications of those policies. We must hold them to their word and remind them that they also promised us transparency. At the end of the day, it's probably a good thing that this is happening. The fight is far from over. This will be a very interesting year indeed. Someone tell me I am being paranoid, please?
No comments:
Post a Comment