The world today faces a scalability and speed problem in the current Internet telecommunication infrastructure. Many have cited a governmental investment into the technology as a smart idea in order to increase availability and speed. Now the financial data on the effects of such an investment are going to be put on the back burner for a discussion on the civil and commercial liberties that a governmental investment extinguishes.
The problems with a government funded Internet reach beyond logistics and the rising debt of the United States, and pour into the realm of civil liberties. Fundamentally the financier of a network can decide the content that flows through the network. We see this on the corporate and education levels with content filters and network monitoring. The organization sponsoring the network will dictate that such sites that either reduce productivity, disagree with the organizations principles, or cause legal issues be bared from their infrastructure. Such common occurrences include the banning of streaming video, social networking sites and pornography. The first two examples play more to the rationale of reduction of productivity than the legal issues that the third presents. Now how does this apply to a government funded broadband infrastructure?
Well if the government, and more specifically the tax payers, pay for a broadband for America program the dictation of content is sure to follow. From the current political climate the conservatives will push their social agenda to bring down the pornographic material on the Internet and any site that does not follow their image of an evangelical America. On the other side the proponents of the fairness doctrine on the left will push for a word for word analysis of blogs, news organizations and the sort to reach an equilibrium of left and right opinions. Now to the average American this might seem out of reach from public policy, but is it? Has the right not had candidates like Christine O’Donnell that make comments on the wrongfulness of masturbation and other sexual acts? This was the candidate for a senate seat running for one the big parties. The left has Al Sharpton pushing for a more “fair” broadcasting environment. He rails against Fox News as a biased organisation that misinforms individuals. Whether it is or not is up to your interpretation but do you think he has an interest in bringing down the influence of Fox News?
If the broadband infrastructure is funded by the government we the public will be fighting against special interests for speed and influence. In today’s Internet any site that gains the traffic can make money for themselves. A college student at Harvard can make Facebook and become a billionaire and create hundreds of job. Two Stanford students can piece together the beginning of the largest hyper-textual search engine we now call Google. But if we look into a government funded infrastructure based on the way government we have now works, do we see innovation in the speed and quantity our Internet has now? Imagine getting a permit or license to create a site, imagine having to prove the worth of your site to a municipal board. The Internet has succeeded because the collective that founded it never asked the generation before how and why it should run. Do you think a person your Grandma’s age would give you a permit to create Facebook? Well that is the age of our politicians on both sides of the isle, Nancy Pelosi is going into her 70’s and John Boehner is in his 60’s.
To finish up I call for a free Internet, not in the sense of pricing but in the sense of content on it, and the wealth of influences in its direction not the decisions of a few in Washington or 50 state capitals.
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