[Dialogue] Fighting the 'Imperial' Internet

Sat Oct 21 20:16:11 EST 2006

AlterNet

Fighting the 'Imperial' Internet

By Bill Moyers and Scott Fogdall, TomPaine.com
Posted on October 18, 2006, Printed on October 21, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/43127/

It was said that all roads led to Rome. However exaggerated, the image is
imprinted in our imagination, reminding us of the relentless ingenuity of
the ancient Romans and their will to control an empire.

For centuries Roman highways linked far-flung provinces with a centralized
web of power. The might of the imperial legions was for naught without the
means to transport them. The flow of trade -- the bloodstream of the
empire's wealth -- also depended on the integrity of the roadways. And
because Roman citizens could pass everywhere, more or less unfettered on
their travels, ideas and cultural elements circulated with the same fluidity
as commerce.

Like the Romans, we Americans have used our technology to build a sprawling
infrastructure of ports, railroads and interstates which serves the strength
of our economy and the mobility of our society. Yet as significant as these
have been, they pale beside the potential of the Internet. Almost overnight,
it has made sending and receiving information easier than ever. It has
opened a vast new marketplace of ideas, and it is transforming commerce and
culture.

It may also revitalize democracy.

"Wait a minute!" you say. "You can't compare the Internet to the Roman
empire. There's no electronic Caesar, no center, controlling how the World
Wide Web is used."

Right you are -- so far. The Internet is revolutionary because it is the
most democratic of media. All you need to join the revolution is a computer
and a connection. We don't just watch; we participate, collaborate and
create. Unlike television, radio and cable, whose hirelings create content
aimed at us for their own reasons, with the Internet every citizen is
potentially a producer. The conversation of democracy belongs to us.

That wide-open access is the founding principle of the Internet, but it may
be slipping through our fingers. How ironic if it should pass irretrievably
into history here, at the very dawn of the Internet Age.

The Internet has become the foremost testing ground where the forces of
innovation, corporate power, the public interest and government regulation
converge. Already, the notion of a level playing field -- what's called
network neutrality -- is under siege by powerful forces trying to tilt the
field to their advantage. The Bush majority on the FCC has bowed to the
interests of the big cable and telephone companies to strip away, or undo,
the Internet's basic DNA of openness and non-discrimination. When some
members of Congress set out to restore network neutrality, they were
thwarted by the industry's high spending lobbyists. This happened according
to the standard practices of a rented Congress -- with little public
awareness and scarce attention from the press. There had been a similar
blackout 10 years ago, when, in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress
carved up our media landscape. They drove a dagger in the heart of radio,
triggered a wave of consolidation that let the big media companies get
bigger, and gave away to rich corporations -- for free -- public airwaves
worth billions.

This time, they couldn't keep secret what they were doing. Word got around
that without public participation these changes could lead to unsettling
phenomenon -- the rise of digital empires that limit, or even destroy, the
capabilities of small Internet users. Organizations across the political
spectrum -- from the Christian Coalition to MoveOn.org -- rallied in
protest, flooding Congress with more than a million letters and petitions to
restore network neutrality. Enough politicians have responded to keep the
outcome in play.

At the core this is a struggle about the role and dimensions of human
freedom and free speech. But it is also a contemporary clash of a
centuries-old debate over free-market economics and governmental regulation,
one that finds Adam Smith invoked both by advocates for government action to
protect the average online wayfarer and by opponents of any regulation at
all.

In The Wealth of Nations, Smith argued that only the unfettered dealings of
merchants and customers could ensure economic prosperity. But he also warned
against the formation of monopolies -- mighty behemoths that face little or
no competition. Our history brims with his legacy. Consider the explosion of
industry and the reign of the robber barons during the first Gilded Age in
the last decades of the 19th century. Settlements and cities began to fill
the continent, spirited by a crucial technological advance: the railroad. As
railroad companies sprang up, they merged into monopolies. Merchants and
farmers were often charged outlandish freight prices -- until the 1870s,
when the Granger Laws and other forms of public regulation provided some
protection to customers.

At about the same time, chemist Samuel Andrews -- inventor of a new method
for refining oil into kerosene -- partnered with John D. Rockefeller to
create the Standard Oil Company. By century's end Standard Oil had forged a
monopoly, controlling a network of pipelines and railways that spanned the
country. Competition became practically impossible as the mammoth company
manipulated prices and crushed rival after hapless rival. Only with the
passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890 did the public have hope of
recourse against the overwhelming might of concentrated economic and
political power. But, less than a century later a relative handful of large
companies would assemble monopolies over broadcasting, newspapers, cable and
even the operating system of computers, and their rule would go essentially
unchallenged by the U.S. government.

Now we have an Internet infrastructure that is rapidly evolving, in more
ways than one. As often occurred on Rome's ancient highways,
cyber-sojourners could soon find themselves paying up in order to travel
freely. Our new digital monopolists want to use their new power to reverse
the way the Internet now works for us: allowing those with the largest
bankrolls to route their content on fast lanes, while placing others in a
congested thoroughfare. If they succeed in taking a medium that has an
essential democratic nature and monetizing every aspect of it, America will
divide further between the rich and poor and between those who have access
to knowledge and those who do not.

The companies point out that there have been few Internet neutrality
violations. Don't mess with something that's been working for everyone, they
say; don't add safeguards when none have so far been needed. But the
emerging generation, which will inherit the results of this Washington
battle, gets it. Writing in The Yale Daily News, Dariush Nothaft, a college
junior, after hearing with respect the industry's case, argues that
<http://www.yaledailynews.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=33653> :

Nevertheless, the Internet's power as a social force counters these
arguments. . A non-neutral Internet would discourage competition, thereby
costing consumers money and diminishing the benefits of lower subscription
prices for Internet access. More importantly, people today pay for Internet
access with the understanding that they are accessing a wide, level field of
sites where only their preferences will guide them. Non-neutrality changes
the very essence of the Internet, thereby making the product provided to
users less valuable.

So the Internet is reaching a crucial crossroads in its astonishing
evolution. Will we shape it to enlarge democracy in the digital era? Will we
assure that commerce is not its only contribution to the American
experience?

The monopolists tell us not to worry: They will take care of us, and see to
it that the public interest is honored and democracy served by this most
remarkable of technologies.

They said the same thing about radio.

And about television.

And about cable.

Will future historians speak of an Internet Golden Age that ended when the
21st century began? 

Bill Moyers is president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. 

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