I am afraid of the corporitazion of the internet.

When I think back to the 80’s and early 90’s, I imagine an internet which was a subversive space where the normal expectations, rules and regulations of society did not need apply.  I look around me and I see the privatization of the online experience (the experience, not the access – the access has been private for a longer time) and the commodization of features which were fundamental and free a couple of years ago.

                My fears are not unfounded. More and more I find myself asked to pay for content. Other times, I am just denied access because my IP is Indian. I am sure this happens to a lot of us as we try and access content from the US. What happened to the internet as a space for sharing? What happened to the internet as a tool allowing access to everyone? I guess this only applies if you happen to live in the US. Besides discriminating us by our physical location, corporations are twisting the arms of governing institutions to shut down sites which promote “illegal content”. Today I tried streaming a football match and check out the new visual design of the website here.

http://www.channelsurfing.net/

Colorful right?

                It’s not just issues of Intellectual property and copyrights, corporations are making their presence felt in the online world more and more in other ways.  In various countries, Net Neutrality (II) has arisen in the last 5 years as a major point of conversation in internet governance. A particular point is whether service providers can slow down or block specific internet traffic. The fear here is that private service providers will slow down traffic to its competitors websites, websites critical of its funders, or politically risky websites. For example Comcast which is a service provider in the US, also operates a video-streaming service for an added charge. Should Comcast be allowed to slow down or completely shut down traffic to Netflix , forcing its customers to use its own paid service?

Saying the issue is complex is an under-statement: Last week in the US, congress passed a law repealing the powers of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to keep the internet neutral (I).  As the new law stands, wireless service provides can deny access to websites they deem not worthy. Simultaneously across the Atlantic, France was introducing a measure to uphold net neutrality as an ideal worth preserving and as a goal worth pursuing by regulatory agencies (III).  Should private entities have the power to censor data online? I’ll let you think about that one.

The current state of the internet is worrying if you are skeptical of giving too much power to private parties. Facebook knows who my friends are, Google knows what I like to search for at 2AM when I am alone,  Youtube knows where in the world I am located through my IP, and now Comcast might be able to choose and regulate how fast I can access certain websites. How much power should corporations have over the internet? I am afraid they already have too much.

Is this a fake picture: you decide: http://i.imgur.com/VqYef.png

this one is real: http://images.appleinsider.com/netneutrality091808.png

sources:

I: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2011/04/09/house_urges_bloc...

II: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality

III: http://www.laquadrature.net/en/net-neutrality-an-encouraging-report-from...

IV: Image: http://connect.in.com/net-neutrality-definition/images-free-ideacity-hd-...