WE Are The Free Press - Net Neutrality
Non profit American news co-operative Associated Press is a monopolistic news re-distribution conglomerate in the United States. Their content is created for them by contributing media (newspapers, radio, and television) in the US. Last year, threatened by the freedom of the internet, AP began charging for any right to use or reprint its content electronically.
On Sep 6, 12:22 PM EDT, Wired published an AP article on Net Neutrality titled Feds OK fee for Priority Web Traffic, which I can’t link to without paying. I can link to the Agonist Forum’s Ten Things That Finally Killed Net Neutrality, or to Peter Kaplan’s Justice Dept wary of “net neutrality” proposals on Yahoo News via Reuters.
There has been plenty of conversation online about Net Neutrality, but precious little in the mainstream media. Much of the online conversation focuses on Republicans and big bad capitalists in general as the perpetrators of the death of net neutrality. Little of it talks about what Net Neutrality is in plain English, or what it means to all of us. It is freedom of speech and freedom of access, which includes freedom to make a living. It affects every single one of us.
It’s worth an hour or two of everyone’s time to learn about this.
Start with Tim Berners-Lee, and sign up at Save The Internet.
Save The Internet is a very unfortunate name. This isn’t like Save the Whales, and it’s a lot more than an appeal to conscience. I’d name it Claim Our Freedom.
The opposition to Net Neutrality has been led mostly by delivery system giants such as AT&T with opposition coming from companies dependent on a customer base that is free to leave, including eBay and Google (although Google has been getting progressively quieter on the subject lately). When you do read mainstream press on the subject, pay some attention to the way the issue is presented (including what is left out). This will usually tells you everything you need to know about the presenter’s agenda.
The average non-tech person has never heard of Net Neutrality, or if they have they don’t understand it at all. When it is explained in terms of their telephone company wanting the right to both ‘capture’ a fee from the consumer and control access to what we currently create for one another for free, then everyone gets it. Take it one step further and explain that your access to others is going to be controlled by big media and telephony, which translates into censorship, and more people might start to value what we have here and protest against losing it.
Who is communicating this effectively outside of the core online tech communities? There is over 80% computer saturation in North America and there are over a billion people online worldwide, so why don’t most of them know anything about this? This is a serious issue that threatens free speech and personal freedom. Is Net Neutrality dead and is it just because we didn’t take the time to tell everyone about it?
Shame on the US press.
I can only conclude that mainstream media is all for censorship. We’ve been listening to their crying over lost readership growing in volume as it is directly impacted by more and more individual voices online.
Many professional journalists are horrified by what is called citizen media with its lack of professional standards. Despite many strong voices advocating the joining of traditional press to online citizen publishing, however, I don’t see anyone actually doing it.
AT&T and Google are corporations, not people. They have a clear legal obligation to their shareholders to make as much money as possible. Period.
The onus for communicating the threat here falls squarely on the shoulders of a free press. Anyone who knowingly ducks is either a coward or a political hack, but cannot rightfully claim the designation of free. Free press means us, just as it did in earlier times of our countries (US and Canada). You and me. We’re the free press today, not the Times or the Post or CNN or Fox.
Why isn’t everyone saying this plainly while we still have the freedom to do so?
