Since 1996, black backgrounds on Web sites have been used as a symbol for protesting government actions.

This time, protest for lack of action.

June 9, 2006

Today, the United States Congress rejected a bill insuring the future neutrality of the Internet. Neutrality would prevent network providers (the companies that own the wires connecting your home or business to the Internet) from deciding what information flows over the wires, and in what priority.

Not only will this prevent you from accessing your favorite Web sites, or using your favorite programs or games, the lack of neutrality will prevent new companies from growing, and new ideas from spreading.

You will hear explanations for lack of neutrality, including topics on limited bandwidth, problems with government regulation, issues around security and piracy, and topics about availability and uptime.

The bottom line: some parts of the explanations may be true, but it does not change the fact that the network providers can now decide what is good for you, and what is not. If it is good for the network provider, it is good for you. If it is not good for the network provider, you can’t have it.

All network providers currently have plans to become content providers (telephone companies), or they are content providers today (cable and satellite companies). As a result of being a content provider, the competition is anything that provides content they don’t own. Basically, anything you can do on the Internet is competition to what the network providers became today.

News sites, community sites, free-thinking and hard-lined opinion sites (on the right, left, or center), dating and chatting, science and sharing, shopping and learning, and any other site or application designed for the Internet (phone, ordering photos, etc.) that does not fit into the business model of the network providers will be prevented from succeeding. When one of these sites becomes popular and successful, the network provider can create a similar site of their own, and prevent the popular site from working.

This cannot be our future. Black it out, man. Black. It. All. Out.