DIGITAL DEMOCRACY VS. CORPORATE DOMINANCE

WHEN NET NEUTRALITY BECOMES PROGRAMMED CENSORSHIP

1.

DIGITAL DEMOCRACY VS. CORPORATE DOMINANCE: R.I.P. INTERNET NEUTRALITY?

By Stephen Lendman.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/digital-democracy-v-corporate-dominance-r-i-p-internet-neutrality/5365146   .  [Here only extracts]

Candidate Obama promised to “support the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.”

President Obama did woefully little to do so. He’s waged war on free expression. He targets whistleblowers and journalists. He wants constitutional rights abolished.

He’s been more lawless than any of his predecessors. Except while campaigning, he’s been largely silent on preserving Net Neutrality.

It’s the last frontier of press freedom. It permits free and open communications. America’s First Amendment is its most important. Without it all other rights are at risk.

Net Neutrality is digital freedom. Mandating it is vital. Unrestricted online access is the only way to stay informed. It’s a vital source for real information.

It’s free from state or corporate control. It’s been this way so far. Public interest groups want it preserved. Everyone has the right to demand it.

It’s too precious to lose. Giant telecom and cable companies want control. They want toll roads established. They want higher priced premium lanes.

They want unrestricted pricing power. They want license to steal. They want content restricted. They want the right to censor.

[IT CONTINUES:  TO READ FULL ARTICLE GO TO http://www.globalresearch.ca/digital-democracy-v-corporate-dominance-r-i-p-internet-neutrality/5365146 ]

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2.

When Net Neutrality Becomes Programmed Censorship

Posted on January 20, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog

Guest Post By Sartre, BATR.  [Here only extracts]

The worst fears of all free speech proponents are upon us. The Verizon suit against the Federal Communications Commission, appellate decision sets the stage for a Supreme Court review. The Wall Street Journal portrays the ruling in financial terms: “A federal court has tossed out the FCC’s “open internet” rules, and now internet service providers are free to charge companies like Google and Netflix higher fees to deliver content faster.”

In essence, this is the corporate spin that the decision is about the future cost for being connected.

“The ruling was a blow to the Obama administration, which has pushed the idea of “net neutrality.” And it sharpened the struggle by the nation’s big entertainment and telecommunications companies to shape the regulation of broadband, now a vital pipeline for tens of millions of Americans to view video and other media.

For consumers, the ruling could usher in an era of tiered Internet service, in which they get some content at full speed while other websites appear slower because their owners chose not to pay up.

“It takes the Internet into completely uncharted territory,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor who coined the term net neutrality.”

Prepare for the worst. The video, Prepare To Be Robbed. Net Neutrality Is Dead!, which includes frank language and expletives, provides details that place the use of internet access into question coming out of this appellate decision.

Analyze the implications logically. It is one thing to charge a for profit service like Netflix a higher fee to transverse the electronic bandwidth of a communication network. Selling a membership to an end user is the source of their cash flow. However, most activist political sites usually provide internet users free access to their particular viewpoint and source links.

Your internet service provider controls the pipeline that feeds your devices and data connection. No matter which company you pay for this service, you are dependent upon this union. A free WiFi link may well become a memory. Beaming a satellite signal, mostly is an alternative, when DSL, cable or other broadband is not available.

No matter what method is used to surf the net, this decision clearly implies that internet access is now a privilege, at the effective discretion, if not mercy; of a provider that allow an account for service.

Yes, the Ending Net Neutrality Signals A Digital Paradigm Shift. It also means that they could unfairly push sites like (add the name of your favorite sites) out of the way of users if they (the “PC” protectors) didn’t like them, acting as effective censors.

Ready yourself for the inevitable results! According to Michael Hiltzik, Net neutrality is dead. Bow to Comcast and Verizon, your overlords.

“In the U.S., there’s no practical competition. The vast majority of households essentially have a single broadband option, their local cable provider. Verizon and AT&T provide Internet service, too, but for most customers they’re slower than the cable service. Some neighborhoods get telephone fiber services, but Verizon and AT&T have ceased the rollout of their FiOs and U-verse services–if you don’t have it now, you’re not getting it.

Who deserves the blame for this wretched combination of monopolization and profiteering by ever-larger cable and phone companies? The FCC, that’s who. The agency’s dereliction dates back to 2002, when under Chairman Michael Powell it reclassified cable modem services as “information services” rather than “telecommunications services,” eliminating its own authority to regulate them broadly. Powell, by the way, is now the chief lobbyist in Washington for the cable TV industry, so the payoff wasn’t long in coming.”

In a digital environment, access to an internet that provides uncensored content at the lowest costs is a direct threat to the corporate economy. Innovation and creative cutting-edge services are clearly marked as competing challenges to the Amazon jungle of merchandising. The big will just get bigger.

Totalitarian culturalists are rejoicing with this latest damper on free speech. News by way of government press releases is pure propaganda. How did this happen?

For a short explanation history, Nilay Patel writes in The Wrong Words: How The FCC Lost Neutrality And Could Kill The Internet.

“The FCC tried to appease the out-of-control corporate egos of behemoths like Verizon and Comcast by pretending internet providers were special and classifying them as “information service providers” and not “telecommunications carriers.” The wrong words. Then, once everyone was wearing the nametag they wanted, the FCC tried to impose common carrier-style telecommunications regulations on them anyway.”

Credo Action believes that “FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler can undo the Bush-era decision to deregulate broadband Internet providers and allow them to operate outside of the legal framework that has traditionally applied to companies that offer two-way communication services.”

Such optimism seems naive in light of the real controllers of policy, much the same, for the Supreme Court coming to the rescue. Mark this court decision as the strategic destruction of the internet as a beacon of unfeigned free expression of information and open political speech. The programmers will be working overtime to set up layers of tasks, restrictions and huddlers to jump over. If you think Facebook censorship is bad, get ready for a purely governmental approved net along the Chinese model.

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