An Internet-Wide Call to Action
Introduction
This week is an important milestone for the internet. Today is the Internet-Wide Day of Action trying to speak out against net neutrality. While this could stray into a political discussion, and spur dissonance between parties, it is an important topic for purely technical reasons. In addition to the impending decision for net neutrality, the W3C has started to make a decision regarding Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) that could have lasting repercussions.
Net Neutrality
Net Neutrality was a fight that we all thought was over and done with years ago. As with other bills and policies, though, a change in political hands and some time later we are looking at the same battle. Net neutrality is one of the most important milestones in internet history. With encryption and other issues still being constantly battled, net neutrality still takes center stage.
The internet has grown rapidly. During my lifetime the internet has went from working over phone lines and being a nicety to being considered a primary method not only for communication, but for news and the flow of information. The problem here is that the internet grew faster than anyone could have expected. Due to this few safeguards were put in place to protect this access to information.
Problems with ISP Control
Access to the internet for consumers must go through and ISP. On the face of this statement, this seems like a small consideration, we get other utilities through providers, why not access to the internet? The issue here is that many of these ISP's are not like other utilities. The other utilities provide power, or water, etc, and stick to that area. And as long as you get the advertised utility, life is good. The issue here is that ISP's also own media companies, and have their hands in other pots. The structure of the internet also requires cooperation between ISP's to get everyone access to various parts of the internet.
It is in their best interest to hard sell you on their services and make sure that you do not use the services of their competitors, and since they control your access to the internet, they can manipulate this in their favor. Not only do they control this, but without net neutrality and Title II they have a stranglehold over other resources such as telephone poles that allow them to prevent competition. Without competition not only can they begin to control our access, but they can control the market as a whole leading to price gouging, lack of innovation, and stagnant or decreasing speeds since there is no reason to compete against themselves.
CALL TO ACTION
Net neutrality will be decided for the second time soon. This decision will start to either restrict or reaffirm our access to free information and a wider range of opinions. This decision holds the future of the flow of information and the continuation of the information age in its hands. If you have not already I highly recommend that you make your voice heard with services such as gofccyourself.com or https://www.battleforthenet.com/
DRM
Not only is net neutrality a hot issue right now, but web DRM has caused its own shockwaves. At the end of last week it was announced that the W3C had voted to approve the EME proposal put forth by Microsoft, Google, and Netflix. The intention here is to help protect content creators' rights to their content. The issue is that the way that this is structured and the way that DMCA could be applied leaves the end users unprotected and liable for many things.
DRM Woes
Security is a constant concern, and technically researching vulnerabilities around the DRM to try to make the web more secure could be a punishable offense. Not only this, but all the compromises and protections that were proposed by members were killed off. The voted-on version is the original aggressive version. The W3C has been somewhat silent and has not spoken out much about this decision since. Many websites have wonderful discussions on this topic and bring up many more of the ramifications of this decision. One that is especially interesting is Cory Doctorow's post on the EFF blog.
Conclusion
Both net neutrality and the accepted DRM have the potential to close off access to information and cause trouble for consumers. Both of these issues call for both concern and an outcry to try to take back the internet. An open internet is the best thing we can have. Please make sure to make your voice heard on these issues to help shape the best connection to the flow of information that we have.