So Verizon, not satisfied with their fat pocketbooks, have decided to take the FCC to court. They are arguing that the FCC doesn’t have the right to tell them to maintain net neutrality.
In a nutshell, Verizon wants to be able to block, or push back, websites that don’t pay for the privilege of being delivered to Verizon customers. In other words, little blogs like mine might be invisible to Verizon customers because I won’t/can’t pay Verizon to carry my site.
Now we can’t blame Verizon entirely. They are a corporation. And in case you haven’t been keeping up with corporations, they don’t give a damn about you, or me, or what is beneficial to a country’s economy. All they care about is making more money for themselves. They will do it on our backs or our corpses, whichever nets the best returns. So Verizon not caring about their customers having open access to any information they might want/need isn’t surprising.
The FCC argues that in order for the US to remain competitive and the economy to continue forward, net neutrality must be maintained.
I have an idea. One that, yes, would require government expenditure, but would result in many jobs, and in the long term, add money into government coffers; build a government run internet infrastructure.
Now I know, you’re all going to scream about how you don’t want the government to know what you’re looking at, etc. Well, in case you missed it, they already do. About the only real difference I see between me paying the government for internet access and paying some corporation is that by paying the government, my money goes towards paying for my health care, roads, defense, and much more. Instead of my money going to some corporate goon who’ll use it to buy a bigger house or a nicer boat.
All I’m say is, if the government truly believes in net neutrality, and their own justice system isn’t going to allow them to do it, then screw the companies, take it over. The second Verizon’s profits drop, they’ll be begging for net neutrality to be reinstated on their servers.
If you currently use Verizon, look to see if you can use a different provider, and if they win this court case, make the switch. And when you call to cancel, make sure you tell them it’s because you don’t need some greedy corporate overlord telling you what you can view on the web.