The Internet is a new broadcast medium.

The ISPs think like cable companies (what a surprise!). They’d like for us to think that way, too.

From the cable company mindset, there are broadcasters, content and consumers. In this view, the sites that send us data are broadcasters because they supply us with content. We consumers are on the Net to get content.

The only thing wrong with this model is everything.

First, the real broadcast model is a one-to-many relationship. The Internet is a many-to-many network.

Second, broadcasters cast broadly. Your favorite local radio station sends its signal out over the tristate region whether or not anyone is tuned in. That’s broadcasting. But if the station also enables you to listen over the Web, it only sends you its signal — its bits — if you click on the link asking for them (see point #1 above).

Third, while obviously you can get as much one-to-many content as you want on the Net — your Internet experience can consist of nothing but Netflix movies and Hulu programs — Internet content is different from the old broadcast content even when that content is exactly the same.

Wait, what, a paradox?! Nah…

Even when Internet content is bit-for-bit the same as what you get over broadcast TV or radio, it’s different:

Anyone can create it and make it available worldwide, changing the power dynamics of broadcast.

Anyone can link to it, creating a very different distribution mechanism from the old air-burst model.

Anyone can comment on it, changing the way our culture absorbs it.

The path of absorption is now far more visible, changing our self-understanding of our culture.

And that’s just the most obvious stuff.

Fourth, that means that the ISP’s model of broadcast, content, and consumers is thoroughly wrong. It’s not a broadcast medium, we are not mere consumers, and when content includes stuff that we make and that we partake in socially, calling it content is highly misleading.

But it’s not misleading if you’re a cable company. You make your big money selling content. That’s why you want to prioritize some content over others. It’s one important reason you give your subscribers ten times more capacity for downloading than for uploading.

If you’re a cable company, it’s all about content. That is the original sin of the way we get access to the Internet in this country.