Network Neutrality 'Debate' Remnants Obscuring Insidious Franchise Reform Push
As someone who has written about network neutrality from the start, it's been depressing to watch the discussion devolve from an honest consumer concern into a twisted carnival of distorted truths, stick figures wielding bad metaphors, dancing men in green tights and flying saucers. It began, simply, as a worry that incumbent phone and cable providers would block or degrade competing content services. It was a valid concern, given the CEO of AT&T's comments at the time.
But then somebody made the fatal mistake of suggesting legislation as a solution. That fired up the engines of the phone industry's lobbying arms. That includes the obnoxious think tanks with antonym names dedicated to crushing all government oversight of industry. It also includes the fake consumer advocacy groups funded by phone providers that spew noxious propaganda. Trust me, after watching them work for a decade, these are guys who could convince the public that shoving a watermelon up its collective ass could cure cancer.
Think tanks managed to turn the network neutrality issue into a mindless partisan fight (as if being screwed by a massive company is really a partisan fight), and the legions of loyal political zealots with lobbyist talking points in hand and a marginal grasp of the subject matter -- piled on with talk of Internet oblivion or free markets. Endless lame metaphors and straw-men later has left the discussion a lump of living, breathing idiocy driven ever onward by old usenet verbal pugilists with nothing better to do.
I mean look at the battle scars and "fair and balanced' disease evident in the Wikipedia entry at this point. It resembles E.T. shit after a Reeses Pieces binge. It barely addresses the original, legitimate concern (which remains valid).
Phone industry lobbyists had this one won before it started. The good news is it opened a lot of people's eyes to how companies distort reality by pretending to be consumer advocates, and it puts PR pressure on ISPs to behave. The bad news is the FCC and Congress remains so saturated with telecom cash, AT&T could start painting their operation center walls in baby blood without repercussion.
The "genius" of it is that while the entire technology Internet community has been obsessed with network neutrality, the phone companies have been busy stripping local communities of all authority via their bogus franchise reform push -- which is a considerably more insidious and immediate threat. Yet that subject is getting largely no attention among national tech writers and bloggers -- who'd rather cover safer and more hit generating subjects such as what kind of toilet paper is used at Google, or just how world-changing the iPhone will be.