Do not let the internet be privatized

Some of the biggest players in the internet space are trying to achieve a seemingly minor but actually profound change in the way the internet delivers information to you. The internet is about to be moneti$ed. Some companies are proposing that they be able to pay for preferred delivery of internet packets (a fixed size of digital data much like a tweet is 140 characters) presumably based on some promise of helping to pay for a grander internet infrastructure “for the benefit of taxpayers.” 

Some of you may remember Mohawk Internet. That is my company. It is likely that if you had dial-up internet in 1997 or thereafter, your bytes went through my garage. Our rules were simple. First come, first served. If all the modems were taken, then the oldest connection was prompted to log out, after which they were welcome to log in again. Everybody was equal. No favorites. But now with the importance of digital streaming, packet priority is going to affect you if we don’t stand up to it.

“Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments regulating the Internet should treat all data on the Internet the same, not discriminating or charging deferentially by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication.” (Generally agreed definition, Wikipedia.)

A smart, but not necessarily good, man named Ajit Pai (look him up) supports a means for internet providers to increase their profits. Websites may soon be able to create a general priority in their internet accessibility. It is a complicated scheme, so complicated that even I, as a veteran internet service provider, may not fully grasp its deviousness.

In simple terms, imagine a Bonanza-style ranch. The ranch upstream from your ranch builds a dam to divert the river onto their land. They let you have some water, but they control how much, and charge you for priority access to the water when you need it most, water already yours by right. The power of your neighboring ranch is solely that they are upstream from you. You cannot overrule gravity, but they can.

With internet neutrality, everybody has equal water rights. This is as it should be. As a student, I transferred what were then huge files (that is 25K bytes, or the equivalent of more than 25 1K 10-inch CPM floppy disks of raw data in a table that is 1024X1024 with data bytes in the range of 0-255) all via the then-new inter-computer connection we now call the internet. My data came from NASA satellites and was to be used to make computer-generated cartography (maps) for academic use under the tutelage of my mentor, Dr. Waldo Tobler. Moving data such as this is what the internet was built to do. Mailing 25 10” floppy disks was slow and unreliable. This new inter-computer network was a huge improvement for moving data for military, government and academic needs. It was by the development of HTML (hyper text markup language) that the internet became useful to commerce. The tag that indicated that a site included HTML was the “www” (world wide web) designation. Non-commercial sites did not start with the “www” marker because they were solely used to transmit raw data file by file. Times have changed.

The point is that a system originally built with public monies for public benefit, and which therefore belongs to us all equally, is poised to be diverted at will by the highest bidder as a profit mechanism for companies that have no authoritative rights to the infrastructure that made the internet possible. They don’t own the river, but they control the dams. Fundamentally, this is piracy of a public utility for private financial gain at your expense.

We need to collectively fight for our water rights. If your browser downloads data from “sell-U-what_we_want-U-2buy.com” faster than it does from “sell-U-what-U-actually_WANT-2buy.com,” where are you more likely to place your order? How does the former get this privilege? They pay for it. They get extra water from a river over which you have equal ownership.

In our new dysfunctional America, this is a “good for business” imperial “improvement,” only acceptable because those extra profits will assure overall improved performance if one accepts the proposition that greater profits will result in greater investment in the infrastructure. The internet is already yours. You bought it. You only have to pay for it like a dial tone on your land line phone. It is up to you to enforce your water rights. Don’t yell, but rather scream, before internet becomes what it was never intended to be: privatized.

Philip Truax holds a degree in physical geography from USCB and a masters in divinity from Yale. He built Sharon Computer and Mohawk Internet. His four sons all attended HVRHS. Philip is a third generation in Sharon.