Is it time to Democratize The Media to Fight Net Neutrality?

Jake Johnson reports on Common Dreams, "Study Shows Corporate Cable Networks Largely Ignoring FCC Plan to Kill Net Neutrality".

You might want to ask ABC about this - if you can figure out a way to get through to them, this is one of the problems with having corporations rather than elected officials; they don't have to take your call. In fact, if you show up with a sign in front of their building they can have you arrested if it's their property. ABC spent 25 seconds in the last week talking about net neutrality, CBS 2 minutes, NBC: zero.

NBC, of course, is owned by Comcast. Comcast, of course, the company that has been suing the FCC to end net neutrality. These guys, hey, they want their money, right? They want to be able to jack up your Internet service prices, they want to be able to sell your information. In order to get your information, they want to be able to listen in on, read, watch everything you do on the Internet, so they know what you buy at the stores. They know what you're talking to your friends about that you want for Christmas in your emails. They know what websites you're browsing.

So they can take that information and they can sell it to to companies that want to market to you, that want to influence you, that want to get your money.

You are the product, right? When you get a service free, you are the product.

Well, it goes even worse than that. You're going to pay these Internet Service Providers for access to the Internet. You're going to pay them about three times what average people in the rest of the developed world pay for Internet services. And you're going to get crappier Internet service than you get in most of the developed world.

It's slower, it's clunkier, the interface is clunkier and on top of that they want to be able to say, "oh, you want to visit verizonsucks.com?" I don't know if that's a real site or not, but just for example. "If you want to visit verizonsucks.com or comcastsucks.com? Can't do it, sorry, that website is not available, it looks like it doesn't exist on the Internet."

Why would that be? Well, it would be because the big Internet Service Providers are doing exactly what China is doing only China's not doing it to make money. China is doing it to maintain political power.

Well, there's a certain point in the United States where making money and wielding political power become the same thing and that's what these corporations are all about.

This is an existential threat to democracy.

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