Digital Journal — Could we soon see virtual toll booths on the information highway? Will the Internet become a privately run and branded service?
The answers to these questions are starting to leak after major phone and cable companies released white papers that outline strategies to transform the free and open Internet into a billable revenue-generating machine. According to an article in The Nation, “industry planners are mulling new subscription plans…establishing ‘platinum,’ ‘gold,’ and ‘silver’ levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even email messages that could be sent or received.”
Also under this plan, content from wealthy corporations or advertisers will get preferred treatment and their sites will be displayed faster on our computer screens. Content labelled undesirable (such as Kazaa) will be relegated to the slow lane or shut out altogether.
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Imagine how this scenario could play out in two years: Political campaigns will be replete with viral marketing from the most popular parties, while third-party candidates with less funds will be shoved to the fringe — even on the Internet. And mainstream music labels would use this policy to market their manufactured Frankenpop while indie bands would face a tough challenge to get noticed on the newly tiered Net.
Online surfing on broadband wouldn’t be the same as today. Well, only if you have a “gold” subscription through your provider. But if you’re unlucky enough to earn the median income, buying a “bronze” level would allow you to download video through low-performance connections. There’d be a cap on how many emails you could send. The data pipes only open wide for those who flash the green. Soon, even the homeless would have to fork over their change when they email from a library’s computer.
This isn’t a paranoid nightmare. Consider Cisco Systems’ own white paper on how to revamp their telecom strategy: “Cable operators must find ways to increase network efficiency and increase average revenue per user…”
All that is inspiring about the Internet — its freedom, its ubiquity, its speed — could soon be threatened by corporate control. If the Net becomes a medium serving the interests of companies hungry for increased revenue, the essence of this interactive technology will fade. The less fortunate Web surfers — likely dubbed “bronzies” or something — will grit their teeth as pages load at a 1998 pace. Going from high-speed to low-speed will undoubtedly frustrate millions of formerly happy Net users.
Monetizing online companies can be a death knell for a free and unfettered Internet but corporations view it as the future. Phone and cable giants hope for a lucrative “triple play,” as they seek to monopolize residential broadband services that send video, voice and data communications flowing into our TVs, PCs, cellphones and MP3 players. And don’t expect Google or Amazon to fight these aggressive plans. They will probably join the corporate big-wigs in order to leverage their value proposition, to put it in business-speak.
The Internet is bound to shape into a different service than it is today, but whether that change erodes our civil liberties is still anyone’s guess. Washington has yet to decide how it will remodel the Communications Act in order to serve the company’s interest or the public. For everyone’s sake, let’s hope the government opts for the latter. After all, the Internet is undoubtedly the world’s most vital medium of free expression. For it to remain that way, lessening corporate involvement would be the best decision to keep this information highway running smoothly.
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