Shifting control of the Internet from the consumer to those with the most wealth means the flow of content will go to the highest bidder, writes Lee Boot, a media researcher and IRC Associate Director, in Why Surrendering Control of the Internet to Market Forces is Crazy Talk, a commentary piece on net neutrality published in What Weekly.
“The Internet Service Providers we pay to connect our homes and business to the Internet and broker content, now want also to charge the content companies like Netflix according to the bandwidth their media require to deliver,” says Boot.
Boot compares the current threat of ISPs controlling the flow of content to when cable service providers promised ad-free digital access to television programming, only to slowly reintroduce advertising into subscriptions after the fact. The fear, Boot argues, is that ISPs—many of which used to be (and still are) cable providers—will honor companies that pay the most with choice quality and delivery.
“It would open a Pandora’s Box of ways to turn new media into the kind of restrictive tool of money and power TV was because it shifts power away from consumers (citizens) toward those with the power to manipulate the media landscape,” says Boot.
