net bleepin’ neutrality
last night i was doing some thinking about the effects that the loss
of ‘net neutrality’ would have on groups in philadelphia. in
discussions with a colleague i came upon the benefit bank, a
local for-profit that does some pretty outstanding work for the city
and the nation. what is net neutrality, you ask? a stupid name for an
important principle. it means that the big telecommunications
companies, like verizon, that own the wires through which we get the
internet, can’t erode or block any content they don’t own or like, just
because they feel like it. if we lose those principles, the internet
will be a lot like cable TV — companies like verizon will be able to
prioritize whatever content they like and degrade access or outright
block the rest. this blogger dude says it best –
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008289.php
"Think of it like Cable TV. Anybody can start a cable channel. But if
you can’t get on TimeWarner Cable here in Manhattan, for me you might
as well not even exist. The Internet could work like that."
as an activist working on commercial, residential DSL to get the word out to thousands of people around the world i find this a scary prospect. no net neutrality would suck for me, dude!
but even worse, it would suck for the benefit bank and the thousands of philadelphians who did their taxes on it this year. read on:
I’m Hannah Sassaman at the Prometheus Radio Project
(http://www.prometheusradio.org). We build community radio stations around the
world, but are based in a diverse residential neighborhood in Philadelphia. An
erosion or defeat of net neutrality principles would hurt communities and
businesses in Philadelphia. Here’s one example.
1) The Benefit Bank, a project of for-profit technology innovator Solutions for
Progress (http://www.solfopro.com), filed over $4 million in taxes this year for
low and moderate income families, while also helping them apply for heating, food,
housing, and a variety of other government benefits specifically available to them.
In over 50 functioning Benefit Bank sites in Philadelphia, not to mention hundreds
across the country, Philadelphians can get their taxes prepared for free in the
neighborhoods where they live, and invest their new benefits and tax returns back
inside their own communities, which need them most. These community members then
also find a new reason to patronize the wonderful not-for-profits that help make
our city a place where we want to live.
If we lost net neutrality principles, we have no guarantee that Comcast or Verizon
wouldn’t choose to block or erode access to The Benefit Bank, a for-profit company,
if they wanted instead to make a deal with Intuit (owners of popular
tax-but-no-benefit software Quicken or Turbotax) to prioritize their access over
the lines and make their pages load lightning quick. Even worse would be a
sweetheart deal with H&R Block and other ethically bankrupt competitors for tax
preparation services. These massive companies are broadening their operations to
self-service online preparation services.
Many, if not most, shelters, churches, and community centers across this city are
working with slow connectivity and slow machines. Putting local entrepreneurs like
Solutions for Progress in the internet’s slow-or-no-go lane could mean the loss of
a local company that is tailoring their business to the needs of the local
community. It would mean that regular folks, struggling to get by, would have to
pay out the nose to do their taxes. And it would mean that the innovation of
benefits coming to people who need them over the Web would die by the side of the
information superhighway.
Please don’t close the internet, and enforce strong principles of freedom on this
vital information conduit for all of us in today’s America.
i feel like i am a stealth adult-type person when i capitalize and punctuate my sentences correctly.
if i find more examples of how we’d get screwed by a loss of net neutrality here in philly i’ll post them.
