I am a journalist now! For those of you that read last week's Cardinal, this is old news. To everyone else, welcome to the fold. I like to think of myself as one part Andy Rooney's disjointed and rambling musings combined with the malcontented disposition (fittingly enough) of a badger.
That being said, the most difficult aspect of my job is to call attention to the issues that all too often get lost in the minutia and routinely fall through the cracks of the 24 hour network news cycle.
One such issue is Internet Network Neutrality. If you are not familiar with this term, you're not alone. The issue has been at the forefront of telecom issues since the early 2000s, but for one reason or another has remained almost exclusively familiar to lawmakers, lobbyists and other Washington movers, shakers and slitherers.
Most major media outlets have simply ignored much of the debate, potentially because their parent companies have a marked interest in seeing that Net Neutrality is wiped away, and left almost all of the reporting to independent news outlets.
Sadly, it is these last independent forms of media that are the ones most at risk if Net Neutrality is to be left by the wayside.
Now that I have built up an atmosphere of fear and confusion (a technique I have learned so well from FOX NEWS), let's dig into the facts of Net Neutrality (an aspect in which the aforementioned News Network has routinely fallen short).
As you read this article, people all around the world are using the Internet. Someone in Dallas, Texas is using WedMD to diagnose that strange rash, another person in Maine is betting on women's field hockey through a Virgin Island casino, countless throngs of students are mindlessly Facebooking away, and at least one person, probably locked away in some clandestine fall-out shelter, is reading independent news. Glorious, isn't it?
Most Americans take for granted the fact that we can access all websites without Internet providers speeding up, slowing down or blocking content based on its source, ownership or destination.
For this reason, U.S. citizens have routinely looked to the Internet as a harbinger of economic innovation, free speech and democratic participation. Since its inception, the Internet has been a place where the best ideas, rather than the best-funded ideas, are celebrated.
This is fine, except when there is a buck to be made. Major telecom companies like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner want to be Internet gatekeepers (kind of like Cerberus, only scarier).
If they get their wish, they will have the power to implement a tiered Internet where websites will be taxed. The amount of tax paid will determine how quickly websites will be able to load or if the websites will load at all.
This policy will almost certainly favor political campaigns, search engines and online companies affiliated with the larger telecom parent companies.
In effect, the companies will have the power to muscle out any newcomers into the telecom industry, squash dissenting opinions and turn our once free Internet superhighway into a profiteering, monopolistic, dirt-toll road.
I assure you that this is not paranoia; this is simply what telecom giants have stated as their plan and paid an estimated $175 million dollars to lobbyists in 2006 to make into law.
Net Neutrality will certainly affect every person who uses the Internet. The notion of a future Orwellian distopia where Google filters all dissenting opinions and journalists are routinely imprisoned and executed may be stretching it a bit. After all, this is not China.
If you care at all about our rights as U.S. citizens to access avant-garde, independent or dissenting opinions you should write a letter to your congressman and tell him or her to defend network neutrality.
Matt Jividen is a senior majoring in history. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
