Free Consequences
Blake Morgan 2-4-2013
Before you tune me out saying I’m a lunatic and that nothing but good could possibly come from free government internet, consider this – One year ago there were two proposed bills that our legislators were trying to pass. These bills would have “give[n] the Justice Department the power to go after foreign websites willfully committing or facilitating intellectual property theft – ‘rogue’ sites like The Pirate Bay. The government would [have been] able to force U.S.-based companies, like Internet service providers, credit card companies and online advertisers, to cut off ties with those sites” (CONDON). You know these two pieces of legislation as SOPA and PIPA. The public backlash against these bills - caused in part by “blackouts” of websites Google and Wikipedia - prevented congress from passing them into law.
Call me a pessimist but it’s suspicious that the same group of ne'er-do-wells who only a year ago tried to bring the internet under their control now seek to grant internet access to everyone for free. Few will pause to consider the consequences of this action because it appears to be such a wonderful proposal. Who doesn’t want free internet access? Nothing is free.
Let’s assume that the FCC succeeds and a public WiFi network is created granting free internet access to all citizens in the United States. The first thing you do is call your internet service provider (ISP) and disconnect your service. Why should you pay for something that’s free? What does this mean for ISPs? Cable and DSL ISPs will immediately begin hemorrhaging money. They will not be able to pay the salary of the technicians who connect your modem. They will not have the capital to maintain the fiber-optic lines that connect to your home. Without income, companies like Cox Communications and Comcast will necessarily discontinue their internet services and struggle to continue providing television service - potentially doubling the price you pay for cable. Soon after, wireless data providers such as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile will discontinue their internet services or be forced to drastically reduce their price per gigabyte of data. The price of cell phone plans will drastically increase for text messaging and voice services. Before internet was free, cell phone companies subsidized the cost of voice and text – often providing unlimited use of those services - with revenue from their data plans. Without that source of income, anything you use your cell phone for other than internet will increase in price. They may begin charging you per minute or per text.
At this point, you might argue that the benefits of free government internet outweigh the misfortune of those greedy companies that charged us too much for internet. I’d be inclined to agree with you if we don’t continue taking this proposal to its logical end. So, let’s continue speculating.
Before long, there will be few, if any, companies that offer internet service. The only way to access the internet will be through government controlled WiFi. Put aside how long it might take fix the network when a problem arises – think road construction. Regardless of whether the FCC had this in mind before the transition to government WiFi, or if the idea came naturally once competition was gone, what is there to keep them from regulating what is or is not allowed on the internet? After all, the government is providing it to us for free. It should be theirs to do with as they see fit. With as much lobbying that goes on in congress, what would prevent the movie and music industries from using government’s control over the internet to increase their revenue? Should Netflix be allowed to stream movies for a modest monthly fee? What about Hulu? Should iTunes and the Amazon mp3 store be allowed to resell music at a low price? What about music services like Spotify or Pandora? The movie and music industries would make so much more money if they sold media direct to the consumer. Certainly, any peer to peer file sharing networks would be dismantled. With that, the goals of the despised SOPA and PIPA legislation have just been enacted and exceeded without so much as the vote of a senator. Since the FCC controls the national WiFi network, they can determine what content can and cannot be accessed. And with that, there is no limit to what can be done to the internet. Why should there be so many news outlets? Wouldn’t it take less bandwidth to have only one news outlet, the government could even run it. Let’s block all news websites: CBS, ABC, NBC, Washington Post, New York Times, Drudge Report, Fox News and others. Want to know what’s going on in congress? Forget about C-SPAN, the government will tell you what it’s doing directly. While we’re at it, we (the government) should enact an internet sales tax. Buying goods online is practically the same as buying it from a store. From this point on, a fifteen percent federal tax and a ten percent state tax will be imposed on all online purchases. You know, we would be able to protect the people from terrorist attacks much more efficiently by monitoring all social networks. Anything you say on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks will be recorded and monitored by the government to prevent possible terrorist attacks. But let’s not let all that data go to waste, we can pass information about possible crimes or illegal and suspicious activity from these posts to local law enforcement to follow up on. Everyone will be safer. We could even find out how people feel about government. Now that the affordable care act (government controlled healthcare also known as Obamacare) is in place let’s also monitor and record data from web searches and personal health websites like WebMD to screen potential expenditures in the healthcare system that could be avoided. If someone searches for the word “cancer” we could easily bring them in for a screening or even discontinue their coverage. Of course, if everyone knows about this policy it will defeat the purpose so let’s keep this one to ourselves. Now that a few years have passed, and everyone with an internet enabled device is using our government mandated WiFi service, we should start charging for access.
You might balk at the above description, you may vehemently disagree, and you may think it could never happen, that government would never do that. Consider the consequences if it does happen. We the people are trading freedom for a false sense of security, choice for convenience, and liberty for tyranny.
Works Cited
CONDON, STEPHANIE. "SOPA, PIPA: What you need to know." cbsnews.com. CBS, 18 Jan 2012. Web. 4 Feb 2013.
