Christian Leftist

Bloggers have been advocating legislation that ensures the equal exchange of information between internet users regardless of class, status, or the content being transmitted — in other words, net neutrality — for a while now. It’s an incredibly important issue for those of us who rel on the internet for not only our livelihoods but our entertainment. What we download and upload is nobody’s business, period, and the whole proposed “tiered pricing system,” where users have t pay internet providers depending on how much they use the internet and how much bandwidth is consumed, would allow wealthy corporations to have the fastest connections and screw everyone else furth down the ladder, especially the average consumer. Who wants to pay fees based on how many YouTube videos they watch per week? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

As with almost any other issue these days, the major news networks have avoided talking about net neutrality whenever possible. But now that the WGA, which has recently ended a several-month-long strike against film and television producers, understands just how dependent the rest of the writing world depends on those flate-rate internet packages to communicate and thrive, its members are suddenly MUCH more ardent supporters of fair legislation, according to this Yahoo News report:

Writers push for laws to maintain Internet freedom

Don’t misunderstand me; I am fully in support of the WGA, and I think they’re doing the right thing. What I am frustrated with is the lag between the attention many news stories about the internet receive from those of us in the ‘electronic generation’ and those who are, despite the explosion of blogging aware, web 2.0 and the internet revolution, still incredibly slow and old school about bringing national attention to online issues OFFLINE.

By the way, Barack Obama is the only presidential candidate that I know of who has pledged to support net neutrality and protect the rights of individual citizens against a lack of regulation of the corporations who seek play gatekeepers and thus control access to the web.

They are many, many people who cannot afford to have internet service at home but who may someday. There are many, many people who are just now learning how to utilize the vast resources that the world-wide web provides. They and their children deserve to know about issues that will affect them when the ever-changing economic situations in all countries force them to seek jobs that require the internet.

This is one of those stories that should garner more attention than a quarterly blurb in the technology section of a newspaper.