Last week I mentioned that there’s a very bad bill moving through Congress. It’s supported overwhelmingly by Republicans but also by a lot of Democrats too. Basically the bill would turn over the control of the Internet to the phone companies — though ‘phone companies’ is probably now an antiquated phrase for Verizon and AT&T and other such outfits. There’s a lot more underlying complexity to it of course. But the change could make it much harder to access TPM or any source of news or entertainment that isn’t owned by some big corporation or, more likely, have the inside track with one of the phone companies. If you’re cool with AT&T deciding the sources of use you can access then you probably won’t mind. But if you like making those decisions yourself, you may want to speak up.
Here’s one group mobilizing against the bill: savetheinternet.com. Another group that is on the case is publicknowledge.org.
This isn’t some obscure issue of interest only to policy wonks. It may seem like it, but it’s not. It’s a very big deal and I strongly encourage you to find out what’s going on.
We tend to take for granted how the Internet evolved. For all its shortcomings, it is a remarkably level playing field where all sorts of voices — the strong and the weak, the popular and the despised — can all make their voices heard. Yes, Viacom’s voice is louder than TPM’s or Atrios’s or Newsmax’s. But if you want to read TPM, we’re right here, just as easy to visit as the media giants.
But it won’t necessarily stay that way.
The Internet could have evolved very, very differently. It could have turned in to one or two big proprietary networks — maybe AOL and Compuserve, or AOL and MSN, each closed, each controlled by one company, without the dynamism, freedom and entrepreneurial magic we associate with the web. The big media offerings would be easy to get to and easy to download while the blogs and other moderately funded alternatives, right and left, had to make do with second or third tier access. Or maybe Verizon decides that anti-Verizon content just won’t run on their network.
Think of it like Cable TV. Anybody can start a cable channel. But if you can’t get on TimeWarner Cable here in Manhattan, for me you might as well not even exist. The Internet could work like that.
It could have been that way. And it could still become that way. That’s what this new debate is about. Find out more about it. And see what you can do to make your voice heard.
