A Majority of Second-Class Netizens?
Jiayuguan, Gansu Province, China, May 10th, 2014.
Salaroche

How would you feel if you had to drive on a daily basis down a freeway where there was a lane exclusively reserved for Ferraris, Porsches, Vipers, Lamborghinis, Corvettes, Lotuses, Camaros, and even Teslas? How would you feel knowing that the guys using that lane were entitled to drive as fast as their vehicles’ technology allowed, while you weren’t permitted to do the same because you just couldn’t afford to pay the fees involved?

I bet you wouldn’t feel well; I bet you would feel discriminated.

Well, that is more or less the idea that the FCC intends to present soon to the American public in its controversial “Net Neutrality” proposition: A fast Internet Lane for content-providers who can afford to pay for it and a slower one for those who cannot.

If the new FCC plan were ever to become reality, the WWW community would soon be populated by first-class and second-class netizens. Big corporations and their affiliates would be able to afford crowding the Web with their faster accessibility to the public, while the rest of us would have our irritated potential visitors waiting longer times to access our modest Websites.

Worse still, all spearheading Internet technology might well go directly to the service of the privileged few while the rest of us second-class netizens would just have to content ourselves using the latest outmoded Internet technology.

But there’s more. The FCC Chairman’s seemingly-elitist vision has implications that would affect the long-term health of the American economy. How could such a two-tiered Internet environment provide enough competitive exposure for any startup companies when the public’s access to their innovations would be a lot slower than their access to the existing technology of already well-established wealthy rivals? Wouldn’t that be like giving a pre-arranged advantage to the technological status quo rather than providing a leveled playing field where innovations may have a fair shot at succeeding?

At this point in time not much is clear regarding the details of the proposal, but there are already two or three among the five FCC commissioners who have expressed serious concerns about it, to the point of some of them requesting a delay of one month on the whole process. Chairman Tom Wheeler, however, insists on going forward in presenting his plan to the general public this coming May 15th.

The Internet has now acquired degrees of global importance that were totally unimaginable just a few years ago. Many of us could no longer conceive of a normal existence without the input we get on a daily basis from the wide variety of websites presently at our disposal over the Internet. Even in countries with high levels of censorship like China, the impact that the Internet has had on the business and social lives of the local people has been remarkable.

Comparing the relative limited power of the Chinese Internet with the relative superiority of its counterparts outside China’s borders can serve as a good illustration of the repercussions that the proposed FCC rules may end up having on the Internet Superhighway should they ever become the norm.

As an expat who has resided on-and-off in China for the past four years, I know how onerous and vexing it can be for information-hunters like myself to surf the Internet in this country, even when using fairly-efficient, reasonably-priced VPN services that break through the Great Firewall of China. The bandwidth we get here is simply not wide enough; it is too restrictive and narrow, even when comparing it to that of much smaller near-by countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, or Thailand, where Gigabytes of data flow with much more ease than here in China.

Such slow connections have significant repercussions on Chinese small businesses, as downloading a large file in this country can end up taking many hours instead of the few minutes it would take to download it in Hong Kong or Taiwan. This often results in tasks being accomplished in mainland China in a matter of days rather than in a matter of hours as might be the case in Europe or the United States. As a result, Chinese business people are at a considerable disadvantage vis-à-vis some of their neighbors, not to mention most of their Western counterparts.

Availability of information, therefore, is vital for innovation of many kinds, going from the technological sphere, to that of means and methods. So why would anybody in America want to give preferential treatment to some while denying it to others?
As we all know, wealthy well-established IT companies don’t have any monopoly on new ideas. Just look at how Internet behemoths like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, or Amazon.com keep acquiring newer smaller IT companies as a means to stay at the technological edge. The seeds of IT entrepreneurship demand exposure to the public in order to germinate. Trim the wings of exposure to Internet startups and you trim the wings of IT innovation as well.

And who would be the winners if Wheeler’s inadequate vision ever became reality? Giant ISP companies like Verizon and AT&T, who would be legally authorized to charge content-providers extra fees for access to their Internet fast lanes. And in these days of diversification, what could prevent those ISPs from pushing their own content at much faster speeds than those of their competitors?

Understandably, other IT giants in the order of Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, Yahoo, Facebook, Netflix and Google aren’t at all happy with Wheeler’s proposal, as they’re the ones who would stand to disburse larger amounts of money to stay competitive. This is why, in an effort to counter Wheeler’s intent, they have sent a letter to the FCC clearly stating their disapproval. Fortunately, there are also voices of dissent within the FCC, particularly those of Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Mignon Clyburn, who stand to make it very difficult for Wheeler to get away with any intentions that might be detrimental to the equal flow of information over the Internet.

In the meantime, and as a taste of the situation that awaits most Americans if Wheeler’s designs were to come true, try picturing yourself living in a world somewhat modelled on my Chinese experience, where your Internet access to some Websites just keeps throttling endlessly because the local ISPs keep slowing it down, while the Websites of those who have the means to afford it (i.e., government-chosen sites in China) appear on your screen as quickly as you click on their links.

In the Chinese case, Internet connections are tediously slow for political reasons, while in the US the general information traffic would be bumper to bumper for sheer financial reasons. In the long run, however, the repercussions deriving from both cases are the same: A general public wanting in information and a domestic technological field whose advances are curtailed by unnatural forces beyond the general population’s control.

As far as the general understanding of this issue is concerned, no good can come to the great majority of us from a two-tiered Internet information highway.

Salaroche