Clement: The Web works best when it’s neutral

If losing the Food Network and HGTV is upsetting you, here’s something else to rock your world.
Much in the same way the Cablevision/Scripps food fight shows that on any given day, you could innocently turn on your TV and find nothing where something once was, so too can information disappear from your computer searches.

Don’t blame Google.

In this case, it’s your Internet access provider that may decide, at any given moment, to cut you off from information it doesn’t want you to have. (Seem like you’re living in North Korea? Don’t be silly: Its broadband policy is far superior to that of the United States. But you get the idea.)

The debate currently raging around the country in media policy circles centers on proposed net neutrality legislation, which seeks to keep the Internet an even playing ground to allow you access to whatever information you want, as opposed to what information your access provider wants you to have. Without assurances of net neutrality, access providers have the ability to determine what information comes out at the top of your searches – which gives them latitude to service their advertisers over your needs. They could also conveniently slow down access to information about competitors of favored advertisers.

To sum up the First Amendment portion of the debate: Scary, huh?

Techies tend to side against the legislation, noting that the popularity of the Web combined with increasing needs for bandwidth makes change necessary, or else Internet innovation will be stifled. It’s really not much to hang your hat on, especially when the folks who line up behind this side of the argument are the biggest cable operators in the country, including AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner. (Interesting how, on a local level, Verizon is the victim of Cablevision deciding it won’t run Verizon ads in the newspaper owned and operated by CVC. Lacking net neutrality, the door is open to Cablevision to wipe Verizon out of Optimum Online search results.) Interesting, too, how those with such strong lobbying power always court major distrust among their customers. In this case, it serves to give added weight to the need for net neutrality. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the poster child for restricted Internet access is China.

On the home front, we face something that is an even bigger threat: The problem when your access provider is also your primary news content provider.

Jaci Clement is executive director of the Fair Media Council.

Published: Oct. 7, 2009 Long Island Business News