Essential Viewing! Weds Oct 18 Local PBS Station:THE NET AT RISK.

Vice President Al Gore gave a speech in 1994 about providing the entire nation with hi-speed fiber optic broadband computer access. Everyone lauded this. The telephone companies "promised" the state legislatures that they would be installing the fiber optics and everyone in the USA would have it by now!!! The telephone companies were never held to their promises of providing this. Now they want to do it, but have the big corporations underwrite the cost, and pay for its use.

Bill Moyers!!!!
Moyers on America
The Net at Risk

The future of the Internet is up for grabs. Last year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effectively eliminated net neutrality rules, which ensured that every content creator on the Internet-from big-time media concerns to backroom bloggers-had equal opportunity to make their voice heard. Now, large and powerful corporations are lobbying Washington to turn the World Wide Web into what critics call a "toll road," threatening the equitability that has come to define global democracy's newest forum. Yet the public knows little about what's happening behind closed doors on Capitol Hill.

Some activists describe the ongoing debate this way: A small number of mega-media giants owns much of the content and controls the delivery of content on radio and television and in the press; if we let them take control of the Internet as well, immune from government regulation, who will pay the price? Their opponents say that the best way to encourage Internet innovation and technological advances is to let the market-not the federal government-determine the shape of the system.

"The genius of the Internet was that it made the First Amendment a living document again for millions of Americans," says Robert McChesney, a media scholar and activist and co-author of OUR MEDIA, NOT THEIRS. "The decisions that we're going be making ... are probably going to set our entire communication system, and, really, our entire society, on a course that it won't be able to change for generations."
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http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/index.html

THE NEW DIGITAL DIVIDE

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Bill Moyers' "The Net @ Risk" explains why America lags so far behind the rest of the industrialized world in broadband access to the Internet. Industry watchdogs say it is a history of broken promises to bring the "information superhighway" to every U.S. home and business. Once a technology leader in the Internet revolution, the United States has fallen into the teens in the world rankings of Internet access for its citizens. In some places-among them Japan, Iceland, Korea, and the former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia-consumers get Internet connections that are significantly more powerful than what is available in the U.S. for the same price most Americans pay. Why? For one, they're using fiber-optic technology-the future of communications-while America is stuck with the same copper wires that connected Samuel Morse's telegraph and Alexander Graham Bell's telephone in the 19th century. Critics say that the telecom industry promised consumers just such a wireless system in the 1990s…but never delivered.

"America's screwed," says Bruce Kushnick, a telecom analyst. "I mean, we basically are becoming technologically deficient. We're close to the dinosaurs compared to what these other countries are going to be developing in the next couple years."

Find out more about the technology and politics behind this new digital divide and join the discussion in the MOYERS ON AMERICA Digital Divide Citizens Class.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/usworld.html

NET NEUTRALITY

The debate is hot, the language heady, the metaphors many. Op-ed pages alternately bemoan "The End of the Internet" or curse "Net Neutrality Nonsense." Allegations fly about the stifling of free speech, the holding back of progress and corporate hegemony. Indeed, network neutrality has become something of a cause celebre in the digital world, pitting a slew of high-profile Internet content providers and consumer-advocacy groups against major phone and cable companies, and federal lawmakers against each other.

But what exactly is net neutrality, and why does it seem to have everyone from Google and Yahoo! to Verizon and AT&T concerned? In a nutshell, the issue involves the transmission of data over broadband networks (e.g. DSL or cable internet services). As the number of sites on the Internet continues to grow and the quality of data becomes more sophisticated-encompassing video and audio files and other multimedia applications-broadband service providers (generally cable and phone companies) are seeking to regulate how material flows to users through their increasingly taxed networks. For most large providers, this has come down to one general desire: They could establish a tiered system of content delivery in which companies with data-heavy content can pay a fee to the providers in return for "special treatment" in transmission. An analogy: For those companies that pay the fee, their content would breeze through the fast-pass lane at the toll bridge, reaching users more quickly; those who don't pay will be stuck in the crowded, slow-moving line, and users will have to wait longer for their content to load.

So why "neutrality?" Because since the Internet's inception, everyone, every site, regardless of the data load, has been given equal-i.e., neutral-treatment by providers, their content transmitted at equal speed. Net neutrality advocates argue that changing this system will give unfair advantage to deep-pocketed content providers, while start-ups, small businesses, and nonprofits who can't pay the piper will be unduly punished. The telecom proponents of the tiered system insist that they need these new fees (in addition to those paid by their users) to recoup the costs of updating their networks to handle all the new data-heavy content. Many also object to the additional government regulation and involvement that would be necessary to enforce net neutrality.
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lots more at..
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/neutrality.html