Youngblood Roche

Stop the McInternet

I am shocked to hear that there is a move to let these major companies take control of the internet. We already have to deal with their outages, their charges to hook up our cable connection, their expensive monthly fees. I never signed anything when I had my cable line installed that said the company I hand over copious amounts of money to each month for internet service could also dictate how I use that service - which websites it would promote more heavily with faster connection.
Think of your computer as you would your car, and the fuel that runs it as the internet. If you bought gas from a gas station and were then told by that gas station that you could only drive on this particular route or drive at this particular speed what would you say? You'd tell that gas station to go talk a long walk off a short cliff. This is America! And you can drive where you damn well please!
What kind of military state would sanction the right for one group to determine the movements of an entire nation? When did the rights of those oligopolies already pulling in more money each year than the national debt of many of the world's small countries become more important than the rights of the people who made those companies as rich as they are today?
When I go online, when I visit a new site, when I post my own page or if I want to start up a new internet business it is my right to do so without fear of paying a "kick-back" and that's essentially what this is - a kick-back, to the rich and greedy multi-million dollar corporate bloodsuckers.
If you travel abroad and a taxi-driver takes you to a hotel or a suit-store or market on his suggestion - he gets a kick-back. That is the same principal behind what companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast are trying to do. They want internet sites to PAY them a KICK-BACK for getting internet users to go to their sites faster, more frequently.
If again you think of the internet as the roads of America (and remember, the web has forever been referred to as the information superhighway) then think of this. If you as a customer had to drive an hour to get to some place to buy the same thing or see the same item that you could also drive only five minutes to get to - which would you drive to? Time and again, you'd pick the place only five minutes away. It's just faster! It's more convenient! But what if that place that was five minutes away from you was only five minutes away from everyone else as well? And that hour drive was one that everyone had to take to get to the other location. How long do you think that business an hour away is going to survive before it has to close its doors forever. Another of Americas businesses shuts down because it couldn't afford the 'rent' of a 'better location.'
We fuss and gripe when McDonalds moves in next door to the Mom and Pop diner. This is the same thing. Why give more power to those who already have so much of it? IT MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER FOR THE SOCIAL LANDSCAPE OF THIS COUNTRY TO CONTINUE IN THESE NON-DEMOCRATIC, TOTALITARIAN PRACTICES.
Stop the censorship before it begins. Net neutrality must remain or else we have all signed on for the end of a freedom we should forever have the right to take for granted!