The new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, and some members of Congress are trying to strip away net neutrality—also known as "open internet"—regulations. If that happens, you can just say goodbye to a lot of news and free expression.
I'm enough of a skeptic to reflexively raise an eyebrow at the idea of more regulations defending openness, but this is one of those cases where a government of the people must impose certain rules to preserve a level playing field for all those people.
If you're read up net neutrality, you can probably skip the next few paragraphs. There will be a big "START READING AGAIN."
Net neutrality is essentially the principal that when you buy internet access from an internet service provider, you get access to the whole internet. They have to treat all internet traffic to you the same, without picking and choosing websites and services to slow or block.
The FCC took a while to figure out how to enforce that in a way that would stand up in court, but they finally arrived at a way of basically treating the internet the same way they would treat a utility—which seems more and more appropriate, since utilities are regulated monopolies, and not many people actually have a choice in internet service providers. (In the city, you might have a choice, but how many people really only have internet service from one company where you live?)
So: Everyone who gets electricity gets the same 60-hertz frequency and so forth and everything you plug into the wall socket works—the idea of an appliance just not being compatible with the power grid probably never even occurs to us. Everyone who gets water is entitled to water that is clean and safe to drink. Everyone who buys internet access gets the same internet.
(No, the FCC doesn't regulate the electricity and water supplies. I just wanted to illustrate the idea simply.)
Doing away with those regulations would allow your internet service provider—which is, right now, usually pretty much invisible to you except with you get the bill—to pick favorites. They could strike a deal with Facebook to squeeze out Snapchat. They could charge you more for web browsing versus email. People often give the example of things like Netflix or Wikipedia being essentially killed in the cradle by established interests that don't want the competition.
And that's basically what the FCC chairman and some members of Congress are trying to allow. In fact, they're trying to prevent the FCC from ever creating such protections again.
START READING AGAIN
Okay. So. Apply that to something like Loudoun Now.
There's nobody else covering Loudoun like we do. The paper started up in a few days with a handful of really dedicated people, and it's a passion project for pretty much everyone involved. That's why we work such long hours and put in so much thought and work—and it shows in the difference in coverage and response we've had from the public, of which we're very proud.
But we're a local paper, so we don't really have a ton of money sitting around.
Suppose internet service providers could show favoritism. We probably wouldn't be on that list of big media companies that could dish out more money to get their site onto people's computers. Or suppose there would be a bidding war, and you'd have only one winner—and only one voice—in every locality. And after that, who's keeping anybody honest? You've got a monopoly, and nobody else can challenge what you write. Suppose a Breitbart won a bidding war somewhere.
And expanding that beyond Loudoun Now—what about this blog? Or what about other tweets and podcasts and websites you go to for something interesting or new ideas?
The internet is where the exchange and war of ideas happens now. That's so obvious you probably didn't even read that sentence. And so, because we rely on the internet, and it relies on this certain infrastructure, the means of access and the infrastructure on which it operates have to be maintained as a level playing field for everyone on it. Forget binging every episode of Knight Rider—this is the free and open exchange of ideas that is the underpinning of democracy we're talking about.
What To Do About It
So! There are basically two ways to attack this right now.
You can tell your member of Congress to oppose Utah Sen. Mike Lee's Senate Bill 993, which is somewhat cynically and crassly called the "Restoring Internet Freedom Act." If you're in Loudoun, your Congressional representatives are Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA-10), Sen. Mark Warner (D), and Sen. Tim Kaine (D).
You can also look up your members of Congress and sign a pre-written letter at the Electronic Frontier Foundation here.
The bill is currently in the Senate Commerce committee, where unfortunately Virginia does not have any representation.