Thursday, November 02, 2017

Net neutrality will not help artists

A NY Times op-ed argues:
Whenever anyone wants to see her set, boom! It’s right there on the internet. Anyone — her friends, bookers, fellow comedians or maybe just millions of strangers — can search for it or stumble upon it. ...

Issa Rae started the web series “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl” on YouTube in 2011. Thanks in large part to its success, six years later, her comedy series, “Insecure,” is set to air for a third season on HBO. It’s hard to imagine this happening in a world without net neutrality. ...

Thanks to our current net neutrality rules, when people like this take their genius beyond Twitter, to the rest of the internet, they don’t have to worry about whether it’s in a pay-to-play internet “fast lane” that makes access to certain types of content easier. They’re in the same lane as everyone else, because net neutrality means there can be only one lane.
The trouble with this argument is that Google, YouTube, and Twitter have lobbied to exempt themselves from the net neutrality rules. Those companies can censor whomever they want, based on their business plan or political views or incompetence, and they do.

Google, Apple, etc. want themselves to be at the master control switches that determine what you can see on the internet, and net neutrality is just a scheme to lock in their power. The rules say that those companies can apply whatever content favoritism they please, and no other companies can interfere with the choices that Google and Apple are dictating on us.

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