The End of the Blogosphere?

[Guest guest]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/06/03/01_blogosphere.html

 

 

 

 

March 1, 2006

 

The End of the Blogosphere?

By Mitchell Szczepanczyk

 

 

Blogs have gained a growing cultural and political impact in the

United States and worldwide. In the United States, they've been

credited with playing a key role the resignation of a U.S. Senate

Majority Leader and the public repudiation of a longtime TV news

anchor. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of the English language deemed

" blog " its word of the year in 2004. The Technorati website boasts

that it keeps track of some 28 million blogs worldwide.

 

Undeniably, blogs and their collective identity known as the

" blogosphere " have become an extraordinary phenomenon. And no matter

what topics they may discuss or what political leanings they may

espouse, they are all under grave and immediate threat.

 

The threat involves the issue of " net neutrality " the idea that those

who manage the virtual roads for internet and digital communications

don't discriminate who travels on those roads and why. But America's

major cable and telecommunications companies are heavily lobbying

Congress now to change that.

 

Companies like AT & T, Verizon, and Comcast want to abolish net

neutrality and set up the virtual equivalent of tolls on the internet.

The idea would be to set up separate tiers of internet access - the

digital equivalent of a ten-lane superhighway alongside a single-lane

dirt road. If you want to access the superhighway, you'd have to pay

AT & T or whomever extra fees through a virtual toll for that access - a

source of fantastic profit potential for the would-be tollkeepers on

the internet. But those who can't afford the superhighway can still

take the dirt road, right?

 

Here's the problem for bloggers and other alternative and independent

media producers who distribute media via the internet: Those who can't

afford that privileged access will far outnumber those who can, and

the result would be, as Ben Scott from the media activist organization

Free Press put it, to " banish hundreds of thousands of bloggers to the

slow lane " .

 

As a result, that digital dirt road will be endlessly clogged and more

than likely face considerable delays to try to access media content on

the internet. And that access isn't just simple webpages but also

other media like television and radio which are becoming and will

become digitized and thus rely on the internet as the major means of

transit.

 

This will then lead to a Catch-22 for bloggers. Either pay the telecom

companies hefty ongoing fees which you may or may not afford, or face

the digital equivalent of a black hole where you can't easily or

readily access independent media content. Either way, the abolition of

net neutrality will dissuade a great many online media producers and

consumers, thereby striking an effective death blow to the blogosphere

and the variety and diversity currently on the internet. The advantage

would thus go to already wealthy and entrenched media producers.

 

In the federal government in Washington, the main legislation

concerning the media in the United States - the Telecommunications Act

- is being rewritten, and the fate of net neutrality (and perhaps the

future of the internet) rests in the balance. Unfortunately, Net

Neutrality clauses have been struck out of the most recent draft of

the Telecom Act.

 

Now the blogosphere may face its greatest challenge: saving itself.

 

Fortunately, there are recent media-related victories that can be

drawn upon for inspiration. In 2003, activists across the political

spectrum joined in widespread protest and outrage against the FCC as

it tried to implement a series of controversial media ownership rules.

That response fueled a successful emergency court order and subsequent

lawsuit which rolled back the rules for the time being.

 

When the dust settled, some three million people responded to the FCC

against its controversial rules - a response unprecedented in the

FCC's history. The same or larger scale of response to Congress will

be needed to preserve net neutrality. And the blogosphere, with its

millions of active folks online, hold that very potential to rally

widespread awareness of net neutrality and keep the internet free.

 

If you have a blog or independent media website, consider learning

more about net neutrality, discussing it on your website, linking to

some of the net neutrality campaigns already underway like Net Freedom

Now by Free Press (www.freepress.net) or Protect Net Neutrality by

Common Cause (www.commoncause.org), and contact your representatives

in Congress to encourage them to preserve net neutrality. One group I

work with, Chicago Media Action, has made available a series of net

neutrality banner ads to use on your website to promote the issue,

online at CMA's website (www.chicagomediaaction.org).

 

The blogosphere has been rewriting the internet. Whether it will

continue to do so depends on whether or not it steps up to help

preserve net neutrality.

 

Mitchell Szczepanczyk (www.szcz.org) is an organizer with Chicago

Media Action, a contributor to Chicago Indymedia and Third Coast

Press, and the host of a weekly radio show on WHPK, the radio station

of the University of Chicago.