We Know How to Save the Internet: Towns and Cities Across America Are Doing It

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/save-internet-we-need-own-means-distribution



With the announcement by the FCC that cable and telephone companies will be allowed to prioritize access to their customers, only one option remains that can guarantee an open Internet: owning the means of distribution.

Thankfully an agency exists for this: local government. Owning the means of distribution is a traditional function of local government. We call our roads and bridges and water and sewer pipe networks public infrastructure for a reason.

In the 19th century, local and state governments concluded that the transportation of people and goods was so essential to a modern economy that the key distribution system must be publicly owned. In the 21st century the transportation of information is equally essential.

When communities own their roads they can and have established the rules of the road. The most fundamental and ubiquitous is what might be called road neutrality. Everyone has equal access regardless whether they drive a Ford or a Chevy, a jeep or a moped.

[Half-Century Man]

1. Work your contacts in the state legislatures to do Net Neutrality on a state by state basis.

Work your local newspapers (letters to the editor, and story suggestions to feature writers).
Work your local library, post office etc.

[TheKentuckian]

2. aka ignore the big picture, stop making noise, stop pressuring politicians, and please focus

on the diffuse idea of going broke localities in an age of austerity, budget cuts, and privatization to build a parallel infrastructure based largely of a tiny sample of rural and undeserved areas coming up with some kind of service in small communities because the big players didn't want to make the needed investment and a few tattered relics of a different age like the TVA and the NRTC and then the thought guess is to make thousands of tiny little municipal networks compete with giant national monopolies while building from the ground up because...ROADS (which would never happen in the current environment (5 trillion dollar infrastructure deficit they seem to have slipped).

We can't get traction to deal with our crumbling water mains and sewers or collapsing bridges (or if there is anything done you'd best hold tight for the tolls and private ownership.

No, what this is suggesting is to punt and go tilt at diffuse windmills while leaving the big time politicians and big monolithic corporations alone to do what they are doing.

[Chico Man]

3. Turnpikes, toll roads, HOV lanes..

This argument doesn't hold up.

[GoneFishin]

4. Not an alternative, but a good supplement to fighting for universal net neutrality.

Making sure the big guys aren't able to get 100% lock on the entire country is important. It is important to have segments of the internet where fast lane extortion is not occurring to hold up as examples to the rest of the country. These small towns which were "not profitable enough to bother with" will hopefully become real pains in the ass for the big telecoms. No doubt the telecoms will lobby at the state levels to limit the rights of the towns to control their own telecom infrastructures. And in some red states they will probably prevail.

[FrodosPet]

5. As long as someone is paying gas taxes

Are you thinking of taxpayer financed systems, or a municipal version of the current commercial systems?

Because if you are talking "Free For All", there will be a lot of resistance to low volume / no volume users subsidizing the porn streaming video entrepreneurs.

[dembotoz]

6. the telcos already own wisconsin

as my local town officials found out when they tried to block a cell tower

local control is no longer local

[daleanime]

7. K&R....

[jtuck004]

8. K&R n/t