The FCC voted two to one along party lines to begin repealing its net neutrality rules. The biggest fight in the Internet's history has just begun, but don't expect to hear about it on the mainstream media.









With most of the media locked in on coverage of Donald Trump and his ballooning scandals - it's easy to forget that there are other very important things going on in the country right now. One of the most important is the ongoing push by FCC chair Ajit Pai to hand the internet over to big telecom companies. Today - Pai inched a litle closer to that goal - as the FCC voted 2 to 1 to begin repealing its net neutrality rules. The biggest fight in the internet's history has just begun - but don't expect to hear about it on mainstream media.





Mike Papantonio (America's Lawyer (RT America)/Ring of Fire Radio/Law and Disorder), spoke to Thom Hartmann about this major issue:





This is a huge problem for independent media whether it's conservative, liberal. They have the potential for censorship of material that corporations don't want us to know about.





And the other potential problem, is these corporations throttling back internet speeds for independent media sites who aren't able to pay these large sums like corporate owned media. We saw something really similar with television. In the 1980s you had about fifty five independent media groups that were out there, giving us the news, taking the airways and making into something useful, rather than the pablum that we see in corporate media.





Today, we've gone from fifty five to four corporations owning all that. That's exactly what's going to happen here. This is a big problem for all independent media and it shows that corporations and corporate media won't stop at absolutely nothing to stifle our voices.





The corporate media has been complicit in this whole story, and that's mostly because they're the ones who stand to gain most from all of this.





The only groups to benefit from getting rid of net neutrality, are massive telecom firms. They get more money from corporations, and smaller firms can't afford to pay. They are going to be pushed out of the market. The average person doesn't even know what's happening here.





The telecom industry spent more than eighty five million dollars lobbying in 2016. Telecom industry gave about ten million to the Democrats and about ten million to the Republicans in 2016 cycle. Means that they win regardless of which party wins. So, don't expect anything out of Democrats, they have gotten as much money as Republicans. Killing net neutrality is going to put the brakes on countless internet start-ups, but they don't really care that these people are being squeezed out. New ideas are being squeezed out. Entrepreneurs are being squeezed out, stifling innovation.









It has started two years ago:





The Federal Communication Commission has begun to kill the Internet as most people know it, adopting proposed rules to create a caste system allowing the giant Internet service providers to segregate users by delivery speeds and ability to pay.



