The Federal Communications Commission has repealed the rules requiring Internet service providers to provide equal access to all web content, i.e. “net neutrality.”
A refresher from mic.com:
“Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers should give consumers equal access to all legal content and applications without favoring or blocking particular sources. The overall goal is to provide everyone with equal access to the internet. By promoting a free and equal internet, net neutrality ensures that an ISP is not dictating what kind of content the consumer — meaning you — is accessing online.”
“The United States is simply making a shift from pre-emptive regulation, which foolishly presumes that every last wireless company is an anti-competitive monopolist, to targeted enforcement based on actual market failure or anti-competitive conduct,” FCC chairman Ajit Pai explained in his best GOPspeak.
Does it really matter? If you are cynical enough, you see the Internet as already in the grip of a few corporate giants – Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook – who already do whatever they want, in spite of their lip service to net neutrality. AT&T, Comcast and Verizon already control most Internet connections. The recent merger of AT&T with Time-Warner consolidates content and delivery in fewer hands.
Brendan Carr, a Republican member of the FCC, said on Twitter: “Americans are passionate about the free and open internet. We don’t want to be blocked or throttled or have our online experience subject to the whims of an internet provider.” Except repeal of the neutrality rules will do exactly that. There is nothing to prevent your service provider from charging more for certain content, or slowing download speed for your Netflix or your local blogger unless you pay more. It was probably inevitable that the free and open Internet, originally developed with government money, would in only a couple decades, be controlled by a few mega-corporations, as God and Republicans intended.
