Open Highways: Why Net Neutrality is important

Imagine they take the interstate highway system and sell it off to private corporations because “it will bring the efficiencies of the free market system” to keep them repaired and functioning. All such roads would become toll roads and the corporations would not only maximize the revenues extracted but might eventually control what kind of vehicles would be allowed to traverse them. Not only that, they could restrict, say, truck traffic to their own fleets and start to control commerce. Sounds like crazy talk, but that’s what “privatizing” the Internet is all about and that is the threat to our open and free democracy. Today these corporations have their hooks in the “people’s representatives” through their massive political contributions and for the last 40 years or so we’ve seen the erosion of oversight and passage of “reform” legislation that does the opposite and benefits, not the American people, but the private interests of their political donors.

If the media corporations shut down an open internet they will want to control what your can say and will start to exclude people who are a political liability to them. Historically, the people who own the printing presses got to control the content printed from them. The Internet needs to be free and open so our “printing press”, that of a free people is filtered by no one. An open Internet allows free expression, association and commerce. When it becomes the domain of private interests you can be assured that all that will disappear.