We find ourselves in a disturbing position here in the Land of the Free, with shadowy cabals of liver-spotted old men making policy decisions based on archaic business models that have no bearing on today's industries. These self-styled Illuminati are the same pre-2k cowards who were afraid of the awesome pirating capabilities of recordable video-tapes, and now they have it out for our information super-highways and they are packing jackhammers. The blatant disregard that these elected officials have for the opinions of the very public that put them in their lofty towers would be darkly amusing if it didn't turn my stomach so as to send me into fits of dry heaving.
Despite the heated battles that their constituents have fought in the name of preserving Net Neutrality, the elderly elected take their thirty or so silver bits and smile through their yellowing dentures as they pretend that they have our best interests in mind when they move to allow ISPs to charge websites for bonus bandwidth. Forget the free trade of ideas that the internet once represented, now we're entering into a situation where whatever company has the most capital to throw around can drown out its competition by virtue of being simply more accessible.
Imagine if you will, the fate of independent news bloggers like yours truly, when our websites load at Jurassic speeds because we can't afford to meet the ante set by news giants like Huffpost and its ilk.
Imagine a world where ISPs, free to give and take bandwidth from individual sites as they please, begin to play conscientious objector to sites that provide material they don't want to support. A world where ISPs throttle access to sites that comment negatively on the monopolistic nature internet availability in the United States. All this bringing about brokered brimstone, a carefully arranged apocalypse, designed by devious admen and accountants whose solitary goal is to usher in a an age of Web Plutocracy.
We're seeing the birth of a digital caste system, where the financially powerful sites can outpace and force the traffic-death of the upstart untouchables. The very idea of a free and unbiased internet is falling apart around us, for what is now the third time, and we haven't even touched on the effects this could have on the consumer.
Its possible to imagine a situation where services like Netflix simply shell out the cash for the additional bandwidth, and then choose not to pass the cost on to subscribers, possible, but unlikely. The best predictor of future events, is often past events, and in our freemarket economy, we've seen that when the price of providing a service goes up, so follows the price of using said service. If Netflix or Hulu has to bribe the likes of Comcast and Suddenlink on a monthly basis, you can bet your bottom dollar that the difference will come out of the consumer's collective pockets. I'd suggest that this sort of price-hike will only lead to an increase in pirating, but with the death of Net Neutrality comes a wealth of totally legal speed-throttling tools for ISPs to restrict our use of sites they don't approve of, so there's that.
I could be wrong, its definitely possible, but I'm not in the business of optimism. In my experience, unfettered optimism in government is a recipe for general disappointment. I want to know what you think though, how do you think all this is going to play out?
No comments:
Post a Comment