Saving the Internet for the People

by Nathan Walpow

Back in the 1940s, the Nazis used punch cards to keep track of people in the camps. In the ’50s, TV shows delighted in presenting rooms full of blinking lights and spinning tape drives, doing nothing useful. By the ’60s, big companies were printing bills and reports, and during the decade after little ones could do the same. Most of us didn’t know anything about the machines they did it on. Nor did we care.

It was only in the 1980s, with the release of the IBM personal computer and its clones, that computers began to pervade society. They started showing up in tiny little offices. Then in homes, where you could use them to balance your checkbook and play Space Invaders.

America Online came along, and people had mail. And there was the Internet and there was the World Wide Web, and a few people even understood the difference. A science fiction trope had come true: we all had magic screens in our houses and, if we paid our monthly fee, could get any information we wanted from them, and use them to interact with the world in ways that grew by the week.

No one controlled the Web. No one controlled our access. The Internet was like the gas and electric companies, but without a public utilities commission to monitor it. Somewhere people were building infrastructure and somewhere people were thinking about capacity, but we weren’t them.

Net 2.0 came along. Social networking. Computing without a computer. You could use your freakin’ phone.

You’d hear stuff about net neutrality and it would go, woosh, over your head. Because who was it that could be not neutral and screw things up? The government? Occasionally you’d hear stuff about China and Google, and you’d think, well, yeah, commie overlords, but it can’t happen here.

Then there was Egypt, and even though the government tried to restrict access, the Net was instrumental in keeping the revolution going. Yay, the Internet! Yay, the people!

Which is all very naive.

Because it’s not just the government we have to worry about.

Who we really need to worry about ... is the capitalists.

The media is supposed to be the Fourth Estate in a functioning democracy and should expose corruption. The sad irony, however, is that the media industry has been corrupted and possesses no incentive to speak truth to power, because they are the power.   —Chris Dollar

Chris Dollar is a writer and educator who, along with director Ali Akbarzadeh and producer Jeff Horn of Akorn Entertainment, is creating #killswitch, a full-length documentary about how media conglomerates could do to the Internet what they’ve already done to the press and broadcast media. Using yet another Web vehicle nobody would have imagined a decade ago, Dollar and his cohorts are using the online fundraising vehicle Kickstarter to put together the $150,000 they need to get the movie made.

From a blog entry on the #killswitch website:

[...] most cities and towns are fortunate if they have two competing newspapers, much less two dozen. Television and radio ownership is even more alarmingly concentrated in the United States. It is simply not in the interests of the Big Six to spend any time discussing the moral hazards of this monopolization. Instead, they continue to merge without much debate, dialogue, or criticism in congress, amongst the American people, or of course, the traditional media itself.

We do, however, have the Wild West of the Internet, where alternative media and consumer rights groups thrive and attempt to hold the politically and economically powerful accountable. But alas, these same media conglomerates are now looking to dominate the Internet, and are increasingly succeeding in doing so. In January of this year, the largest media company in the United States, NBC-Universal (owned by GE), merged with the largest cable and home Internet Service Provider, Comcast, to become the biggest vertically integrated media conglomerate in the history of the United States. Ironically, NBC-Universal or its news affiliates did not provide much coverage or critical commentary of what would be the repercussions this wedding between corporate titans.

The merger was blessed by the Federal Communication Commission despite warnings from numerous consumer rights groups and academics. They rightly feared that the decentralized and democratic integrity of the Internet would be jeopardized by moral hazard. Namely, that Internet Service Providers that owned content would be tempted to treat that content with preference over competing content. They also argued that NBC-Comcast and future vertically integrated media conglomerate would be commercially incentivized to impede or block the flow of content and information from competitors.

Not surprisingly, no one in the traditional media lifted an eyebrow when FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker resigned her position to become Senior Vice President for Comcast shortly after lobbying to expedite their merger with NBC-U four months prior.

The central premise of #killswitch: Decentralized knowledge is an essential component of a democratic society; traditional media have vacated their role in disseminating this knowledge; the Internet stands ready to step in—if the powerful will let it.

 #killswitch attempts to make sense of 21st century Issues concerning the media, the Internet, and democracy. Interviews with academics, activists and citizens, as well as representatives of political and business power centers, contribute to an in-depth analysis what’s been going on and what’s to come.

A short promotion:

I’ve been thinking lately about how the media have abdicated their responsibility. How 24-hour cable news needs so much material that all sorts of ridiculous crap gets aired. How the trivial is presented with the same gravitas as real news. And how, in some kind of infernal feedback loop, the filling of so much time with dross has made news organizations forget the need for real reporting. It’s not as bad in the print media—not yet—but it’s getting there.

Maybe I’m naive, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it might not be just laziness at work here ... but financial self-interest as well. I’m still not convinced. There’s a part of me that says, just get the right mover and shaker in place at, say, MSNBC, somebody who has seen where the media are going and wants to reverse the trend, and we could turn things around. (This is the same part of me that believes if we just got the right Democrat into a leadership position in Congress, they’d call the Republicans on their bullshit and begin to straighten that place up.)

The #killswitch guys believe otherwise, and they’re willing to tell us all why. But they’re not with a big media conglomerate, and they’re not Michael Moore, and they’re not independently wealthy. That’s why they’re using Kickstarter. It works like this: somebody proposes a project. They say how much money they need and how long (up to 90 days) they get to raise it. They say what kind of goodies people get at various donation levels. People donate. If the goal is met, the payments are processed. If not, no money changes hands.

The #killswitch guys need $150,000. As of June 15, they’ve got about $15,000 pledged (including—full disclosure—a lousy 25 bucks from me). They’ve got 17 days to go. Goodies include DVDs of the film, T-shirts, and credits. That’s right: give enough and you can be an executive producer.

The message ought to get out. Commit some bucks. Tell your friend, the Internet millionaire who still lives in his parents’ basement. Publicize #killswitch on your own damn blog. Help keep the World Wide Web out of the hands of the moguls.

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