Should Net providers get greater power?

For over a decade and a half, America’s “Truth movement” that believes the 9/11 incident in New York was a “false flag” operation designed to expand America’s military supremacy as well as other interests related to oil has been counting on alternative media in disseminating its shocking ideas, relying largely on the “freedom of speech” on the Internet. The reason is that the mainstream media have paid virtually zero attention to the bombshell accusation that the “terrorist attacks” on the World Trade Centre complex and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 were plotted and executed within a system lauded as the world’s strongest democracy. The debate is ongoing, may come to a head in the near future, and might intensify the current controversy regarding the issue of “net neutrality”.
The United States’ authorities, specifically the Federal Communicat-ions Commission, have repealed rules that advocates said promoted free speech, encouraged innovations, and prevented Internet Service Providers from controlling online content through financial charges and blocking access to certain reading, viewing or listening material. Reasons given include rubbish content clogging the system and “exploitations” that are robbing that ISPs blind when they should have had higher fees that could indeed benefit consumers with no vested interests. Those supporting the end of “net neutrality” also insist that free speech will never be affected, although the “pro” and “con” camps can never really agree on what constitutes “free speech”.
Understandably, opinions have been divided on the lines of interests. Consumer groups don’t like the decision to repeal the law while those representing big digital firms are maintaining that the time for change has come. Those against repealing the law are adamant that ISPs should only “control the pipes”, not what passes through them.
Giving the business giants greater ability to virtually favour certain content over the other does not bode well for the principle of free speech, they say. In other words, who are they, the ISPs, to decide which content should be slowed down, or blocked, or be subjected to higher fees?
The proponents of “net neutrality” said it had been a core democratising principle of the Internet. According to them, providing an Internet service should be like providing a phone service: The phone companies cannot and must not make the connection worse if they don’t like the callers, the ones who receive the calls, or the conversations.
On the one hand, the debate revolves around an age-old question of what is free speech and how much control Internet providers should have to make the online world productive, constructive and relatively peaceful. On the other hand, the debate is coming at a time when alarm bells are ringing across the world regarding the power to select content for consumption which is now very much in the hands of tech companies.
This fresh controversy, though, has a lot to do with people’s declining trust in conventional media as well as mainstream politicians in power, and a growing belief that pure “wisdom of the crowd” could be threatened if the Internet is controlled by those who are not supposed to control it.
An old issue is getting new elements, so to speak. The pro-repulsion camp is correct in saying that the world has changed, but whether the measures introduced to cope with the changes are useful and fair have been questioned by the other side. What transpires next remains to be seen, but we owe it to the Internet that we can have this debate at all.