Truth Bombs

I don't know if you've heard this folks, but the government is trying to steal the internet from you. Or, wait, they're trying to limit what you can access online and regulate the content of your favorite websites because Washington is just full of regulation-crazy regulators who think they can run everything better than the private sector. The FCC is going to take my cherished internet and turn it into something just like that 1984 book I've never read!

If the above statements sound ridiculous to you, that's because they are. Yet somehow, they mirror the formative rhetoric behind the Internet Freedom Act. Championed by Arizona senator and defeated presidential candidate John McCain – otherwise known as the septuagenarian codger who admittedly can't navigate Google without help from his wife – the Internet Freedom Act aims to stymie the enactment of the controversial net neutrality legislation currently before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The debate over internet network neutrality is a thorny-brushed labyrinth of polemical arguments, rife with the sort of specialized jargon that alienates the average internet user from participating in the discourse surrounding the future of the electronic fount of porn and sketchy information America loves so dearly.

Essentially, net neutrality laws would consist of measures that serve to prevent telecommunications companies from restricting user access to some web content while favoring the content of their corporate subsidiaries. Companies like Comcast and Time Warner enjoy a dubious oligopoly over citizens' ability to connect to and browse through the Internet, and the FCC is endeavoring to limit those companies from stomping out innovations from their competitors.

This legislation is directed toward protecting the unrestricted flow of information and the resulting hum of economic activity the Internet fosters by guaranteeing that the telecommunications industry will not have the authority to unfairly or perhaps illegally filter content or prejudice their allocation of bandwidth for financial gain. 

Proponents of net neutrality claim that the internet was not intended to have a "Gatekeeper" and that the FCC will ensure that it never does. While some experts, including TCP inventor Bob Kahn, the so-called "Grandfather of the Internet," have mounted reasonable counter-arguments to those proposed by the FCC, many of which surround the FCC's capacity to effectually implement these policies.These more substantial criticisms don't seem to inform McCain's opposition, as the senator seems opposed to regulation of every stripe, apparently because that's how mavericks do.

Nothing in this legislation, however, justifies the reactionary language of McCain's Internet Freedom Act, which exists to block the passage of any net neutrality laws. McCain wrote in a public statement that he believed the FCC's efforts were an example of "onerous federal regulation," the likes of which dip directly into the senator's re-election fund.

You see, John McCain is the senate's single largest recipient of campaign donations from the telecommunications industry. Perhaps that's why a curmudgeon who can't even check his own email suddenly has so much to say about the Internet, albeit with characteristically misleading faux-populist sloganeering.

Put simply, net neutrality will allow you to continue to explore the boundless expanses of the internet without impediment from the companies you pay to provide the connectivity you so require. You may now return to your apathy.