Throughout my higher education I have heard cyberspace referred to as a place where consumers wield a great deal of power. My professors have cited blogging and social networking as tools that will ensure our Internet freedom. I have lived in this fantasy world, believing in earnest that maybe the power really had shifted from the hands of the producers to the consumers.
Those days are over.
With the FCC approval of the Comcast-NBC Universal merger on January 18, any hope for net neutrality has been washed away with the sewage. Comcast owns more telecommunications lines and controls more Internet connections than any other service provider in the nation.
The company has been caught slowing down traffic and even prioritizing data and information on its servers.
And now it controls the face of that information.
Comcast, as an Internet service provider, owns the framework and pipelines of the Internet in our country. The company is, in essence, a distributor and provider of the means by which we receive and transmit our information. This used to be a minor topic in our field of discourse, but now we have reason to be seriously concerned.
For example, take Tracy Record, who covers local news in the West Seattle neighborhood.
In light of five major corporations owning the vast majority of American media, she and her husband have taken it upon themselves to cover local news in their neighborhood.
Tracy writes the articles, her husband, Patrick, sells the ads and their middle school-aged son edits the photos.
The family not only supports itself this way; they provide relevant news to their community supported by local advertisers.
Like many bloggers, they use WordPress, an extremely cheap Web publishing platform.
Before this pinnacle merger, the family had a fair opportunity to distribute its information through the Internet. Using techniques like search engine optimization, they could inform and empower their community.
Well, now the West Seattle blog will have to compete with a merged media and distribution company that can prioritize information. Interestingly enough, the Federal Communications Commission insists this merger is in the interest of consumers.
When Comcast can silence its critics, it will be difficult for such a ludicrous statement to receive any backlash.
Previous to this conjoining of two major media conglomerates, we had hope for freedom of information. Our free speech rights in the United States were something many countries in the world could hardly fathom.
“I was astounded by the freedom of speech you have here,” said Zedidi Oni, a native of the West African nation of Togo. “You can talk about the government and still go to sleep at night not being afraid if you will not wake up in the morning. In my country, you can’t really say anything or do anything against the government. Unless you want to risk your life or your family’s, you constantly remain living in fear.”
We were a paradigm for freedom of speech. Now that speech can be controlled, manipulated or even silenced.
The internet was the “fifth estate.” It was a forum for watchdogs to keep our “fourth estate” media in check. Techniques of web advertising were the Wild West, with technology entrepreneurs creating new markets for information on an hourly basis.
But now we are entering a new world of cyberspace: a world where NBC Universal will be the vehicle for propelling the economic interests of Comcast.
A world where bloggers can be supressed, independent Web developers are imprisoned and information entrepreneurs are left fresh out of options.
And one government organization is to blame.
The FCC wields a great deal of power of who speaks to it. It regulates satellite, radio and TV transmissions. It controls ownership rules that most of the United States does not even know exist.
These laws regulate how many television or radio stations a single owner can own, or whether newspapers can own television stations, and how many. These are regulations that are supposed to ensure diverse ownership of media, which subsequently encourages a fairness of ideas.
The concentration of media in the hands of fewer and fewer companies is not a new development, but the reforms in the last two decades have been astonishing.
In 1983, more than 80 percent of the media was controlled by just 50 companies. By 1992, that number had been more than halved to 14. By 2010, the overwhelming majority of the mass media was owned by only five corporations.
At this point, the FCC has relaxed ownership rules so much that fairness in media is nearly impossible. We have a set of changes that will move us in exactly in the wrong direction.
Comcast-NBC can now dominate the dialogue of our communities, moving it in whatever direction that satisfies its investors and advertisers.
Alternative ideas from independent media companies will become nearly impossible, as Comcast can prioritize information at will.
It will control the reservoir of information, the pipelines and the dams that stop it.
I fear for the day when it buys Facebook or Google.
[email protected]