The Net at Risk

Tonight's final Moyers on America documentary is one that will interest everyone reading this. Because if you are reading this, you are a dedicated user of the Internet, perhaps yourself a blogger, certainly a reader of blogs, news, news commentary. Who knows? Maybe you do internet dating, maybe you call up your porno fantasy. The Net has possibly changed your life in ways you could never have imagined ten, twelve, fifteen years ago. So you have a stake in keeping the Net free of the corporate control of content that has overtaken our other forms of mass media. Tonight's program is The Net at Risk and this is its focus:

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.

Here, from PBS, is a pretty compelling preview of the show:

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