net neutrality & isp religion

If you haven’t heard, 15 July 2014 is the last day to submit comments to the FCC about Net Neutrality. You can read what people have said on this page and submit your own comments over here on 14-28.

Basically, the cable companies argue that they need to get rid of Net Neutrality so they may offer better products to their customers as the “all bits are created equal” clause of net neutrality prevents this. My wonderful ISP Cablevision is making record profits according to their SEC filings and the speed of my Internet service is slower than when I first subscribed. Plus, every 13 months, my bill goes up 10% in price. I’m wondering what extras and goodies I get for my slower and pricier bandwidth? What sorts of research did they do with all of those record profits to create new services? What is next?

Nothing. They don’t give a shit about you or me. They are a monopoly. They will not research new products as they don’t need to. I have no other options for high speed Internet; my ISP does not care about me. Killing Net Neutrality will simply give them another means to extort money from me to get back what I have now.

But, enough of that cruft. Let’s talk about Anthony Scalia. Basically, he said that it is acceptable for corporation to have a religion and that they can choose to foist their reproductive opinions upon their employees. Ok… Well, Wheaton College is taking it a step further, they refuse to fill out the two page / five question form that would exempt them from the requirement to offer reproductive insurance as even talking about the issue is considered an affront to their religion (see this). So now, a company can refuse to even acknowledge the discussion. Ok…

What if an ISP decided to find religion that refused this reproductive discussion? What if Cablevision, mostly owned and controlled a single family (who I believe are Catholic), decided to forbid people from connecting to websites that discuss contraception? †  Scalia said it is okay for a company to not even acknowledge it and if Net Neutrality is killed, it makes it doubly okay to refuse the traffic. Joy.

But, this is America, land of competition! I can choose a new ISP. Except, I can’t, there is a monopoly in my town. And moving elsewhere doesn’t work either – every town has a monopoly. Plus, the #1 and #2 ISPs in America are trying to merge (see 14-57). I wonder if their religion will require them to merge.

Keep the net open. If you don’t speak now, they won’t let you speak later. Keep Net Neutrality.

† Note, I’m not saying the Dolans would do this, but it won’t be illegal if they did.