Hardware firms oppose Net neutrality laws

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Free The Internet

We do NOT want to see the internet going the way of what happened with cable. Today, though there are hundreds or thousands of cable channels available in U.S. and many more available from around the world, the people who subscribe to cable have virtually NO input into what cable networks are presented onto the cable system to which they subscribe. This kind of supreme control didn't change when the satelite tv systems came to compete with cable. Cable subscribers and satelite television subscribers STILL have absolutly no input into which channels they would prefer to see. Cable subscribers, as local groups, have no power to get channels they want, though many local cable providers are theoretically required to submit to requests from local jurisdictions for changes to local service in exchange for granting cable companies the right to run their wires throughout the community above ground and underground, on public land and on private land. The same kind of arrangement with local jurdistictions are also often struck by any other company that wishes to run wires to every home in town, telephone companies, power companies, and other entities. This deal was the right deal to make when cable was getting started. By the public allowing cable companies to run their wires over and under land land they did not own, without charge or toll, and with the agreement by the cable companies to allow the local governments the right to require changes in service it gave the cable companies the ability to sell their wares via those cables to the very people who actually owned the land upon which the cables were run. This was great! Cable got local monopolies and the people got cable. Since nobody had ever had cable before just getting it was good enough. And for a long time there weren't enough cable channels to fill all the channels a cable company could send down that wire anyway, so nobody was upset. But as the number of cable tv networks has exploded in the past 15 years, now there are many many options, and the cable company now has all the power to choose what YOU see and you have little power to change that unless you can rally your local govt to force the cable company to add, for example, "Lifetime" and drop one of the oodles of throw-away channels that hardly anybody ever watches, such as home shopping networks and religion networks. Now, with the appearence of the new cable boxes that offer lots more service digitally provided to your television via those same cable wires that now send all kinds of data into your home which, technically, since most cable companies have never bothered to renegoiate their deals with local governments, there is a big gray area here. Today the cable companies are plowing ahead on all fronts to keep their total hold on whatever they feel like delivering to you via those cable wires without ever consulting the people upon whose land those wires run over and underneath. Now these same cable companies are joining together to make their control over what comes into your home even more complete with their attack upon the internet and pushing ahead the so-called 'two-tier' network. What they are really doing is not making a 'two-tier' network, they are seeking the same kind of control over what comes into your home in internet form as they enjoyed when it was only cable they sent into your home. This is rapidly expanding to VOIP and other telephone-like services. From their perspective this only makes sense. As in the early days of Hollywood when the movie theaters were all owned by the movie studios, distribution of content followed the whims of the the owners of the studios and not, in any way shape or form, the interests of the people. Eventually this form of total dominance over the movie business was stopped by the government and the studios were forced to choose between being a content provider or a content distributor. This allowed the movie industry to move to a free market status. This very same idea was why AT&T was eventually broken up. Its dominance inhibited innovation and wasn't good for the very people over whose land the wires AT&T used to distribute their product. We're facing another crisis of the same kind. Makers of hardware that form the physical basis of the internet, and the companies which distribute the internet over the wires that run over or under your home -- which you do not collect a penny for but which the cable companies can send whatever they want over or under your land any time they want, want to be able to control whatever goes into your home. Or, more specifically, they want to keep the dominance they already have and they want to extend that dominance into the realm of the internet. By giving those who currently run signals on wires into your home the power to choose not only what cable channels they feel like providing you regardless of what you want, but also the ability to favor which websites are delivered rapidly to your computer and those which are delivered slowly and those which are not delivered at all, means that they have effectively taken total control of what you are even permitted to see, AND, given them a HUGE leverage with the websites themselves, forcing the websites to pay THEM (the cable companies and other related hardware entities) in order to even reach YOU, the audiences they want to reach. And how much money do YOU want to have to pay to the cable companies for THEM to allow YOU to have access to a website you want to look at but they currently block for whatever reason? Is your wallet as healthy as eBay or Amazon's? Probably not. Want to know why there are tons of shopping channels wasting space on your cable system even though their portion of the audience is so small as to be irrelevant? Its because they pay cable company to keep them on. Cable companies currently pay small fees to the big important cable networks like ESPN and the Discovery Network group. And that will continue. For a while. But as the cable companies and entities with an interest in the hardware side of content delivery continue to grab more and more control of the data packets that come and go in and out of your house over wires on your land that you collect no toll from the cable companies for using they will effectively become similar to grocery stores and the battle that goes on there for shelf space. You may have a terriffic product to show off, or a great website, or a great new cable channel or a new phone company that is just wonderful and you'd like for everybody to have a chance to buy from YOU, why should the cable companies allow this? And how will new ventures of all kinds, including what we can't even imagine now, get going if all the best distribution outlets are under the exclusive command of the cable and signal distribution hardware makers? Today, if you have a great new cheese and you want to get it into grocery stores you have to have either a private fortune to launch a new product on your own, or go and bow your head to Kraft and get on your knees and beg them to try your product and make a deal with you to distribute your product, possibly under their name, and definetly in some of their valuable grocery store shelf. Do you really think food prices should be as high as they are?? Why do you think they're that way? Do you really want to see your internet viewing choices cut and your cable channel lineup stay the same drab one year in and year out with most of the channels you have no interest in whatsoever, and yet you have no power to demand you be given anything else??
What we're seeing today is nothing more than the latest group of robber barons who know a good thing when they see it and know that the people rarely organize and stand up as their freedoms and choices are carved up and given over to somebody else to make choices about what YOU can watch and what YOU can NOT watch. I loved Blue Bell Ice Cream back in Texas, but you can't get it in California. Its great stuff. But its really hard to take your product national. Why does Fox have Regional Sports Networks? Wouldn't it be nicer if YOU could choose what game you want to watch instead of just what Fox chooses to give to YOU just because you happen to live in a certain area, ESPECIALLY if you knew that the game you wanted to see was being shown right then on Fox Sports West, while you're stuck with only being allowed to see some other game of teams who have already been statistically elimiated from the finals just because that game is the one they happen to show on YOUR Fox Sports Regional Network? Why doesn't Fox just let YOU choose what game YOU want to watch? Fox will scream its all the fault of the NBA and MLB and NFL and so-forth, and that's true to a point, but, in today's sports market, those barriers are rapidly dying away, feeding more and more into Fox's total control over what they allow YOU to see. Should these internet changes come into being Amazon and eBay will have to come to the table with the cable companies and beg for "shelf space" over the wires that they have total control over, but which run over YOUR land. From all directions, if these changes come into being in the form of laws that will take decades to overturn, or turn into something that resembles freedom again, cable and hardware companies and any other company that distributes content via wires are rapidly grabbing at control over YOUR choices. The division between those who make content and those who distribute it will once again be blurred, since the big cable companies are owned by the big studios. Anybody who just makes content, like Amazon.com, or an independent production company who make movies known as "indies" (like those for which the Sundance Film Festival is known for) are forced to go to the distributors and beg for a pittance from them in order for their work to be distributed, with the bulk of the profits going to the distributor and only a tiny bit, relitively speaking, going back to the makers. And finally, if you like Itunes then you probably don't mind that it digs way down into your computer and becomes essentially a virus that can hardly be removed from your computer if you decide you don't want it anymore. But did you like having it forced down your throat the last time you tried just to update Quicktime? Did you notice you didn't have a choice? And Itunes didn't even take you out to dinner first. Nope, just wham, bam, thank you mam. Didn't even bother to hardly tell you at all that it wasn't really Quicktime that your computer was getting a serious update to, instead it was just a ploy to force Itunes on you. And, now that its there, just like all the other big players, Real Media, and Windows Media Player, they do little more than montior all the activity that goes on on your computer and keep track of every bit of sound and video you watch and then report it out all over the place under all sorts of guises such as "non-profit" places purporting to "help" you keep track of the music you've listened to, and shooting back all your playlists to just about anybody with a lawyer who claims to be connected to the music business in some way or anther and sends them a demand letter.

If this massive money grab and power grab that these big cable companies and other content distribution-related companies succed, then we will lose the internet. It will be gone. It will essentially be outside the reach of just about everyone, except that it will be presented as if its all great, and it will only cost you one-half of one cent each time you visit Amazon.com to buy a book, and another half penny each time you check your email, and a quarter penny for each of your own emails you choose to look at, and you still won't get "Lifetime" on your cable network either. And Amazon will have to share a bit of their profit they made with the cable company on the book you had to pay the cable company for the cable company to allow you to buy a book from Amazon.

And if all this comes about, then the people will have only one option left to them to regain control of what they choose to see or not see. And that will be to go to their local town councils and demand that the town allow them to start charging the cable company for every single digital packet that flows over the wire on your land, regardless of whether or not the packet is supposed to go to your computer or not. If a packet comes down the wire and travels over part of your land then you will have to demand a toll for that service you are providing to them. And they'll have to pay every single landowner upon whose land that packet travels down until it reaches its intended computer or television destination. And if they don't pay up, you'll have to errect a barrier upon your land to packets travels down the wire on your land until the pay up. That would cause a problem for lots of folks, the cable company and your neighbors who can't get the signal until the cable company pays up. But I suspect that can easily be avoided by simply having the local governments take control of the wires back and make arrangements locally that satisfies its citizens and extracts revenue from the cable companies so that they get some of this big pile of money too. And then, like Alaska's citizens all get some of that oil money every year cause its pumped from state owned lands and sent through piplines that travel over many private lands, the townspeople, if they're going to have to suffer the slings and arrows and whims and greed of those who would choose to censor your internet and viewing options for either greed or something else, then they will at least all get money back from the cable companies that they can use to form brand new internets. Some free, some not. With more tollways on it then anybody EVER thought possible. Or, we can all agree that maybe, maybe, like our interstate system we call freeways, hey, you know that's been working for fifty years. Shouldn't we at least give the internet 50 years before we start chopping it up into private roads and tollways that end up not letting anybody go anywhere cause all the roads are now owned by the people whose land they travel through or in front of, and it costs a dime a house to travel through a suburban neighbohood, and sometime a neighbor gets cranky and closes off his part of the street or suddenly cranks his toll way up. There will be nothing you can do about it. This is what these big companies are trying to do, but they're even worse, they not only want control of the street in front of their own houses, they want control of all the streets, everywhere, in front of yours and everybody you know. Then they want to be able to tell you when and if you can travel upon what part of it. If your best friend happens to live on the wrong side of town when the walls go up the, like East and West Berlin, some may find they no longer can be with those they love online. And if the try to climb the wall they will be sent to jail or fined or both. In short, if they try to climb that wall their financial life and reputation will be shot.

Isn't the price of oil so high today, in part, because of Standard Oil and a few other companies creating such huge monopolies that had such little regard for the people and their needs that it lead to the creation of Unions in America?

Is this what America wants? If the internet is captured and sold off to the big players just as the oil industry was in the late 1800's, does America really want the return of the Union? But this time it won't be a union of workers seeking humane treatment by their employers, this go round it will be Subscribers Unions that will come into play. People will have no choice but to join together and demand changes and the return of the freedom of association that the constitution demands and which the internet currently so rightly, and so constitutionally currently supports.

There are so many things wrong with what is about to happen should these companies lobby laws that do nothing for the people and instead just hand over the internet to the latest batch of Johnson & Johnson's and Kraft's and Rockerfellers and Gates for them to do as they will. This is a gigantic money grab, and grab for control of something that ought to remain as easy to get as air and water, becuase we've already seen that its almost as essential to the further development of the human race. Look at what has beeen achieved in research since the internet came into general use. To deny it now would be like selling air, or making the price of a bottle of water as much as a gallon of gas. Its simply more than we can afford, and it will hurt us all, on many levels, if we are denied our constutional right of association and assembly on the internet. To take it away will be, in a way, unconstitutional.

And lastly, though I despise the way that religion actively trys to present fiction as fact, and looks to writings of dubious origin and even less moral value as their guides to living, I'm surprised that religion hasn't come out against this power grab to control the internet. Religious groups will take a severe beating should this happen. Because suddenly their websites won't be freely available either. And suddenly their voice on the net will be silenced too. Though I don't like what they sell, one can't help but notice that if religion is denied the internet to try and put out their message, as science progresses they will be without any place at all where they can join the world of technology and science on an equal footing. For, as most people look at churches in communities as what has brought them religion from the past, what will bring religion to their children and to the future will be the internet. Should their voice become as censored as the rest of us they will also be silenced. The only group that won't be silenced will be science and technology, for it is the internet itself that has grown out of science and it is HOME to science today. Though the big companies may censor and silence a lot of people on the internet, the one groupt the will NOT censor will be the scientiests and engineers, for these are the very people who will support the internet, no matter who rules it, so they can't be silenced or the rulers of the internet would suddenly have nobody to fix it when it breaks. I'm surprised that the religous groups haven't thought of this and put a stop to the upcoming censorship by the big companies who have gathered into a pride of lions and are about to bring down this big Rhino and devour it as greedily as they can.

If the governement betrays us and gives control of the internet to the cable companies and phone companies and anybody else who has wired up a community for some reason, or who makes the hardware to do that and control it, then everybody wll be silenced. Do we all really enjoy what is on TV now so much that we don't ever want to see anything else?? If you love Reality Television now, just think how fabuleous it will all still be twenty years from now. Cause that stuff is cheap to make, and the people, having been allowed little more than that from their cable companies anyway, don't even realize that they could actually already be getting a LOT more. Its all out there, your cable company just won't let you see it. And, as Lily Tomlin's 'Ernestine' used to sneeringly remind us whenever we wanted something better from our phone service and could not have it "we're THE phone company!"

Ready to give the cable company total control over what comes down that wire on YOUR land? They've been screwing you for years on the choice of cable channels you get, did you like that so much that you are ready to hand over to them control of all the websites that you might, or might not, be allowed to view?

I, on the other hand, like to choose for myself.

Posted by: Soapbox   Posted on: 05/18/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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