On the eve of a historic vote on net neutrality, I have a sinking feeling that certain hysterical opponents of these rules still think that AOL is the Internet.
Net neutrality is about treating all data equally and making sure that corporate despots — the big Internet service providers — can't stymie innovation from startups and small competitors by slowing data speeds from websites that cut into their own cable business.
But in the debate over whether they should be prevented from doing that, we hear a lot of sweeping claims backed up by few facts.
Whether it's House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee Chairman U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, (R-Ore.) calling this "Obama's Internet grab" or House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) warning it would "destroy innovation and entrepreneurship," these arguments basically amount to: "Keep the government away from our Internet! No innovation comes from government! It's not like the government invented the Internet!"
Point of fact: The government actually did kind of invent the Internet, or at least provided the technical foundations of what would become the Internet. And yeah, I don't trust the government either. But I trust big greedy corporations even less.
This is about cor- porate tyranny. The reason the Internet has been a vehicle for innovation is precisely because we have had an open Internet. If it wasn't for the open Internet we had (before corporations started to get their hands on it), we wouldn't have Facebook — we'd have AT&TBook. Netflix never would have been born.
Dispensing with net neutrality only gives more power to those big companies. By the way, innovation hasn't come from those big companies. It's come from startups like Netflix and Facebook that wouldn't exist if Boehner and Walden had their way.
Let's not forget that this entire process began with the Federal Communications Commission investigating Comcast for slowing down the file-sharing site BitTorrent — in 2007, under former President Bush, which undermines the nonsensical government-takeover conspiracy argument. The only reason the FCC is reclassifying the Internet as a public utility is because a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled it has to, not because this is Obamacare for the Internet.
To be sure, President Obama and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler have done themselves no favors by failing to release the draft 332-page plan to regulate the Internet like a public utility and ensure this type of data equality. Shame on them for that.
They gave their opponents ammo. Like when Commissioner Ajit Pai held up the document and proclaimed, "It is worse than I imagined!" Sure it is. That's why no Republicans have bothered to leak it to the media. How dumb they think we are.
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