Net Neutrality might be the least understood and most important issue of the twentieth century. If the companies who have the most to gain get there way, anyone who is perceived as threat to current or future profits of those companies will squashed. But that’s not where it ends, that’s just the beginning.

This could be very serious. It is thought that President Obama won the election by getting his message out on the internet. If Net Neutrality fails, money can be used to completely control information that the public gets to hear or see on the internet. It can be used as part of a larger plot to silence the public. If you’re wondering how they could such a thing, it’s that difficult. China and Russia do it all the time. Additionally, if you think ISP’s, phone and TV services are over charging you now… Just wait.

The bigger picture. When a state decides to violate the peoples rights, the news reports it, even if the parent company, of which there are only three, supports the states view, because we will hear about it through other media. That other media being the internet, but what if no news agency broke the watergate story, would you have heard about it. Would Nixon have been impeached.

Oddly, the dark horse and possibly the hope is Google. They are building and installing their own fiber optic network. Googles actions in the ISP market is having an interesting effect on the current Internet Service Providers, they are racing to finish installing fiber optic networks everywhere in an attempt to sew up the market place.

Just a FYI on the current pricing system. Let’s say that I start a website, “Joe’s World”, and it becomes wildly popular, resulting in high traffic. My internet provider will notice, and charge me for the extra bandwidth that I’m using, but they can only charge me a rate equal to what they would charge anyone else. They can’t elect, because they don’t like my sites content, charge me more or slow my service, or block people from visiting. There is no free ride and that’s fair.

What the ISP’s want to do is also charge per connected user to your site, plus charge the user additional fees to access to the site… If You don’t pay, your connection is slowed or turned off. If your political view or message may threaten the ISP future profits, via taxation or regulation… Your connection is slowed or turned off. Or if your providing movie streaming service, but your provide also provides a movie streaming service, they can charge a high enough rate to shut them down or just cut them off, as it is a conflict of interest for them.

If you think, big deal, I’ll just switch providers. List the ISP in your area. I dare you! You’ll find you don’t have real choices. The ISP’s are making plenty of money, but they see all the more money they can be making. You will have no option but to pay. Even if you said, I don’t need tv, you really do need the internet, and even if you think you don’t need the internet, you will be impacted. You see, your grocery store, bank, car rental, book store… Hell, all commerce is pushed via the internet. All that traffic must go through the local ISP to access the web.

You might not know this, but all of your hard line telephone service, travels the internet. If you have cable TV, they likely provide your phone and internet service. You can get a satellite feed, but it’s not cheap and it’s slow.

Of lately, our government has been driven by corporate goals. Those Corporate goals are viewed as being hampered by government regulation. Control what the public knows and believes and you can change regulatory policy to meet your goals by installing people who will vote to help archive the corporate goals.

Your a fly on the wall:

At the table of a super PAC meeting somewhere, who’s interest is that of the coal industry or the NRA or the RNC. Billions of dollars are on the table for the taking, but the liberals put forth these regulations that interfere with our goals. Worst yet, the liberals do a better job of getting their message out, mainly because of their friends in Hollywood. We can’t win going head to head, we need an advantage. We need to block their message. We’ve done this in the past with noise, but the people are wising up. We need to control the flow of information. We currently control most of the news industry, print and TV, but their circumventing us using the internet. Thanks to the NSA, we know who is doing what, and there are just too many targets. What we need to do is cut this weed off at the roots.

Want to take some action, check out Common Cause