Photo: Flickr/Backbone Campaign
Corporate executives never let virtue stand in the way of profit.
By Jim Hightower / 12.13.2017
Free and open access to the internet is a virtuous democratic principle known as ānet neutrality.ā
It means that it doesnāt matter if youāre a brand-name corporation or an unknown start-up, a billionaire or a poverty-wage laborer ā youāre entitled to equal treatment in sending or getting information on the worldwide web.
However, corporate executives never let virtue stand in the way of profit.
Weāre told that access to this information highway is crucial to your and my educational achievement, future prosperity, and ability to be self-governing. Itās vital to our nationās well-being. Yet access to the digital highway isnāt treated like a public service.
Instead, itās controlled and sold to us by a few for-profit corporations ā so few that selling internet service has become a non-competitive market, letting service providers extract excess profits from customers. And now theyāve convinced Donald Trump & Company to dump the idea of net neutrality, erasing this public benefit to grab greater profits.
Hereās their scheme:
Rather than having one big broadband freewayĀ open for transporting everyoneās content, the internet service monopolists intend to create a special system of high-speed lanes for the richest producers of content. This express lane will be made availableĀ to those who want to rush their content to the public, leaving everyone elseās jammed up in the slow lanes.
Meanwhile, the internet providers will charge a premium priceĀ to those who can afford to have their content channeled into the high-speed toll lanes. If smaller providers canāt afford it, they lose. And so do you.
A broad coalition of enraged and net-savvy groups has arisen to defend the internetās democratic essence. You can join them by visitingĀ www.BattleForTheNet.com.
Originally published by OtherWords under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative 3.0 license.