Say goodbye to the Internet as you know it. I’m not being overly dramatic here. I am being very serious. The Internet is about to be commandeered by big corporations and the United States government to serve them and only them. We, the People, are about to be left out in the cold …  yet again.

I am talking about a topic known as Net Neutrality.  Right now, any old website has the same chance at being seen by millions of people all over the world as Google or Facebook. By the time Google, Facebook, and the federal government are done, smaller sites will run at a snail’s pace compared to Google and Facebook. Is it fair? Not in the least bit, but it is what the people we elected into office feel is best for us.

George Carlin, God rest his saintly soul, used to say that this country was bought and paid for a long time ago, and he was absolutely right. But even George Carlin would be shocked at the level of disregard that our democratically elected officials have for what is best for us. Lobbyists are pushing all this legislation through and no one is really stopping it.

President Obama understands the importance of Net Neutrality. He made it one of his platform points in the 2007 election. But the absolute corruption on Capitol Hill has caused Obama to turn a blind eye to Net Neutrality and now even the Internet will fall under the icy grip of the federal government, which will be acting on behalf of the big corporations.

So what does all of this mean? What will happen is that Internet providers will create two different “Information Superhighways” that will run side-by-side and at the same time. One of those superhighways will run incredibly fast and benefit from all of the innovations that occur on the Internet on a regular basis. The second superhighway will be throttled down to the point where videos will take minutes to load and information will move at a pace that won’t be much better than a 56k modem.

If you haven’t already guessed by now, only big corporations will be able to afford to put their websites on the fast superhighway. The rest of us will have our websites slowed down so much that no one will want to visit them. A lot of the blogs that you love to read on a regular basis will suddenly be so frustrating to use that you will stop using them. The Walmart website, on the other hand, will run just fine.

The loss of Net Neutrality will also have an effect on the security for slower websites. Information that takes a long time to load is a lot harder to protect than information that loads on a high-speed connection. Viruses and spyware will run rampant on the websites that you love to look at every day, and there isn’t a damn thing you or anyone else can do about it.

People love the Internet because it always felt like the Internet was that one place that the government could not bother us. I remember when the Post Office wanted to charge stamp fees for email, which never saw the light of day because common sense intervened. Most of us know that the government has been monitoring Internet traffic for some time, but this newest attack on the American people crosses a major line.

YouTube will probably start charging people to post videos and you can also expect social media websites to start charging monthly fees as well to offset the significant increase in Internet access costs. The music industry will get its chance to put a stop to the distribution of independent music and big record labels will retake control of the music business. Meanwhile, the average American will go back to being ignored.

Why is this kind of thing happening? Because the federal government and big corporations have learned that no matter how horribly they treat the American people, the American people will still pay their taxes and buy their products from big corporations. If the American people shifted their allegiance back to small businesses, then the consumer would take back all of the power and the lobbyists would start to care about what consumers think. But the American consumer can’t quit buying from big corporations and the big corporations know it.

We gave up our country when we allowed WalMarts to be built on spots where our local malls used to stand (I warned you, but no one listened to me). Now we have to put up with whatever the big corporations and federal government decide to do to us. This newest law is only the beginning. The end game is to create a way for Internet providers to make it financially impossible for small business websites to be seen on the Internet and take away your ability to be exposed to all of the wonderful things that the Internet has to offer.

Why is this happening? Because we let it. What can we do about it? We can stop this if we just decided to shop at small businesses and take the financial power away from big business. In other words, there isn’t anything we do about this except watch even more of our freedoms disappear and turn into profits for big corporations. God Bless ‘Murica.

Nick Oliver is a Niagara County resident and damn proud to be part of the Information Superhighway. His column appears every Wednesday and would still be worth the wait if you had to load it over a throttled-down connection. He can be reached at nickoliver@writeme.com.

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