Xanthippa's Chamberpot

The Internet is the one tool in the hands of us, the ordinary people which allows us access to a wide variety of information and opinions.  It empowers us, so we are able to form opinions which are truly our own.

After all, most of us are not able to explore every aspect of science and society (and all that) all on our own!  If I spend my time in the lab, chances are I will not be able to travel to far off places to see what is happening there.  And, if there is no news-source to tell me that, say, a brand new type of car fuelled by water has been invented in Brazil, it just might not occurr to me to be dissatisfied with my gas-guzzler here….

The internet corrects this.  It allows me to search all kinds of sites, read things written by people from all over the world, with all kinds of opinions.  Raw and unfiltered… so I must learn to differentiate between supportable fact and fanciful notions or downright manipulations, but – again – the internet enables me to do that.  I learn a lot by doing this.

Yet, perhaps, even before my younger son gets to high-school, this may no longer be the case…. 

Thanks to Blazing Catfur, here is a truly scary piece of information:

AmericanFreePress.net published an article titled ‘Canada’s ISPs plan net censorship’.  Here are some excerpts:

“The plans made by the large telecom businesses would change the Internet into a cable-like system, where customers sign up for specific web sites, and must pay to see each individual site beyond a certain point. Subscription browsing would be limited, extra fees would be applied to access out-of-network sites. Many sites would be blocked altogether. “

…

“The plans would in effect be economic censorship, with only the top 100 to 200 sites making the cut in the initial subscription package. Such plans would likely favor major news outlets and suppress smaller news outlets, as the major news outlets would be free (with subscription), and alternative news outlets, like AFP, would incur a fee for every visit.”

…

“Marketing and big budget ‘content-pushing’ just doesn’t seem to work on the Internet, and this is something that several industries want fixed. ISPs know this and will benefit greatly by fixing this for the marketing and entertainment industry,”

In other words, the internet will no longer be what it is now.  No more ‘surfing’.  Instead, the internet might – in effect – become no more than an extention of the current cable-subscription service/directed advertizing. 

The ISPs will be paid by the ‘richest’ sites (which will increasingly include specific TV shows and other ‘big-budget’ mass-media entertainment) to include their websites on the ‘package’ of 50/100/200 websites, much as entertainment channels are now sold in ‘bundles’.  If one wishes to go to other sites, they will either be ‘billed per visit’, or (depending on the ‘package’ one can afford to purchase from the ISP, all other sites will be blocked.

Yes, blocked.

But, even if you could access them ‘per visit’ – how many sites do you check on a daily basis?  For fun, news, entertainment?  5?  10?  50?

How many would you visit if it cost you $1.00 each time you went on?

And, if people can no longer afford to frequent all but the richest, most ‘influential’ (with ISPs, of course) websites, how long before most of the rest become obsolete…extinct???

And who will then control the majority of the content seen on the internet?  It will be the entertainment industry!  The very same people who have already bougth full or partian control of so much of our news industry.   

 Well, at least there will be consistency…

Our movies and TV shows will show the proper ‘moral’ lesson to go along with the ‘news’ and the ‘internet chatter’ of the day.  The ‘social engineers’ at the helm of these multinational corporations (which is what the big entertainment companies are now) will have unprecendented power over the opinions we, the ‘unwashed masses’, are able to form.

Is this an isolated move?

I wish it were….  But with the ‘stuff’ that has been happening all around the world, aimed at intimidating, limiting and regulating the expressions of free speech on the internet, this appears to be only one little step in the march towards internet collectivism….

(Thank you, ‘Dust My Broom’, for this most excellent post.)