PUTTING A PRICE ON THE INTERNET

By Robert P. Bomboy

Do you use the Internet?

            More than 87 percent of Americans – almost nine out of ten of us – go online to get a recipe, find information on our phones, talk with our friends on Facebook, locate products we want to buy, get the news - one guy in particular, whose first name is Donald, uses Twitter a lot.

            Well, heads up! Everything’s for sale in Washington these days and, if they get their way, big telecommunications companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T will buy unprecedented control over what we can do, say, see, consume, or create online.

In the latest corporate power grab, President Trump’s appointee, Ajit Pai, who was Verizon’s lawyer before he became chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has said from the outset that he intends  to nullify regulations that have kept the Internet free. He is an ally of Big Business broadcasters rather than a steward of the FCC. What a conflict of interest!

His appointment last January signaled Trump’s desire to ruthlessly wipe away every vestige of President Barak Obama’s consumer-protection regulations. Ajit Pai isn’t even pretending to be working in the public interest

With plenty of help from lobbyists and his former employer, Verizon, Pai last week announced plans to undercut what's called “net neutrality.” Until now, neutrality has meant that the companies connecting you and me to the Internet couldn’t arbitrarily control which websites load faster or slower, or charge websites or apps to load faster.

For Internet users like you and me, the cost of Internet access will go up with Pai’s plan. Free wifi could all but disappear. Big Telecom companies will give us access to their preferred websites and services for free, but charge us extra fees to use anyone else’s. Comcast, Verizon, AT&T or any other big Internet Service Provider will be able to completely block or slow down any website or app it wants to. Pound sand!

It’s no exaggeration to describe the end of net neutrality as a corporate takeover of the Internet. 

It has been open season on the Internet this year. Last April, remember, President Trump signed a Republican bill that let Big Telecom sell our Internet browsing histories to the highest bidder, even though all the Democrats voted nay. The new law blew away rules that made Internet Service Providers ask us - get our explicit consent - before they could scoop up our browsing histories, the locations of businesses we might physically visit, and the mobile applications we use — and sell that valuable private information for profit.

Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and the others, using this very complete information about our Internet lives, are now getting even richer by creating profiles of each of us and putting them up for sale to any corporation or government willing to pay top dollar. This opens the door  to vastly wider surveillance and discrimination based on a person's race, religion, gender identity, financial situation, or medical condition.

            As the Washington Post pointed out, undoing the Internet privacy rules, was “the first step by the Republican-led FCC to overhaul the Obama-era net neutrality rules.” 

Realize that you can be hurt by this. This is a personal fight for everyone who relies on the Internet. In times past, Congress has stepped in to block the FCC from destroying the free and open Internet. Make the call, send the email, Twitter! Tell our Congressmen and senators we’re watching them, because we are.