Today, President Obama made his first major pronouncement in support of net neutrality, nearly six years into his term. My main question is, what took him so long?
Net neutrality is one of the (many) underpublicized issues of our time. If corporations are permitted to determine the speed of internet traffic to specific sites, it would destroy the Internet as we know it. Corporations would be able to steer internet traffic to their subsidiaries or suppress traffic to websites critical of them. The loss of net neutrality would take us one big step closer to a completely corporate dominated society.
Although I am glad President Obama has spoken out, I wish he had done so a lot sooner. Net neutrality should have been a core issue in the 2014 election. Had President Obama had the guts to defend it, he might have motivated some more people, especially young people, to go out and vote.
The net neutrality issue would also have provided a good means to attack the conservative notion that oppressive government is the biggest threat to the American people. Contrary to libertarian arguments, corporate oppression can be just as powerful and overreaching. We have already seen this issue with corporate dominance of the televised news media, which has ignored many progressive issues or distorted them through false balance. If corporations are allowed to essentially regulate the internet by controlling traffic, they will have total dominance of information in this country.
This is not simply a technology issue. It is a free speech issue; it is a freedom of information issue; it is an issue of utmost relevance for our democracy.