I just saw an interesting video about net neutrality on YouTube, titled "Save the Internet" by Human Lobotomy.
I suppose I should be more worked up about the government/corporate take over of this beautiful example of peaceful, self-regulated, free flowing, human interchange. I'm not worked up, though. I feel anxious and resigned that the corporate government of America is mucking up the world wide web. I would like to get mad, get active, and successfully protect this "level playing field" of communication, but the "enemy" has all the time, money and spite in the world and can wait us out as they have in past conflicts.
A YouTube commenter has it right when he/she predicted the American response to this threat.
"They'd first have to pass a bill via congress, and the American people would uprise and they'd feel the backlash and back down just like they did with amnesty, It will never happen."
This video does a good job of giving historical perspective to the current advertising infestation which is threatening the energy and convenience of web surfing. As an example, Blogger/Google offers adsense as a means of making money for interested bloggers. I don't accept the offer. I just feel that too few people visit and so why junk up my site with flashing, attention grabbers that are mostly ignored. For sites that get more traffic, using adsense is perfectly fine so long as there are no noisy pop-ups and malware involved. See how this works? I choose to babble without remuneration and others choose to get paid to babble. Works great!
According to this video, the real danger to the internet is the double whammy of corporate greed combined with government control - self regulation goes out the window, choice is banned in order to protect the virtual world from terrorists and pedophiles, and the whammies kill off a good thing that delivers a nice ROI for most normal corporations, without infuriating the citizens of this virtual world. "Hamfisted" is the first word to enter my stream of consciousness about this issue. Visualize the whammies with their huge hamfists pummelling bloggers, ebayers, flickrers and twitterers, to name a few, and the phrase "save the internet" becomes appealing. We won't loose the internet - it will change, though. The evolution of newspapers, radio, film, and television is a template for the world wide web and we know it includes loud beer commercials and sexless car ads-just one hair short of relentless spam. Not pretty, and I hope I'm wrong.
Hmmm, ESP anyone?!
