YOU - Person of This Year, But Next Year's Toast?

YOU -- PERSON OF THIS YEAR, BUT NEXT YEAR'S TOAST?
[SOURCE: The Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Jonathan Rintels, Center for Creative Voices]
[Commentary] Alas, the incredible euphoria of Time Magazine picking You and Me as their Person(s) of the Year for 2006 can't last forever. No more all night parties. No more dancing in the virtual streets. Time to sober up and realize how all this wonderful - and less wonderful - user created content celebrated by Time almost didn't happen; how fragile our ability to post our content on the Internet really is; and, how the telephone and cable companies that monopolize broadband Internet access want 2007 to be the year not of Us, but of Them. The entire phenomenon of a huge audience reaching home brewed content created by Us relies upon consumers having the right - and opportunity -- to choose what websites they visit. Today, we have that, and it's called "Net Neutrality." But the handful of telephone and cable companies that control the market for broadband Internet access - over 98 percent market share for cable and DSL! -- have spent hundreds of millions of dollars this year to persuade Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that they should be able to control what content streams over their "pipes" and what websites their captive customers can visit. The companies' plan is to force content producers to pay extra fees and tolls for so-called "priority" service, while relegating those who don't pay to the Digital Dirt Road. Who will pay those fees and tolls? Those who can afford to - the already fat, established, and constipated Big Media and Old Media -- at the expense of the creative, hustling, innovative, and entrepreneurial. Had this Pay to Play on the Net System been permitted a few years ago, Google would still be in a garage. Rocketboom would be Rocketbust. YouTube? Try TheirTube.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-rintels/you-person-of-this-year_b...