Or at least that's what Steve Peterman, producer and member of the Writer's Guild, suggested in last week's House hearing on the Internet Freedom Preservation Act.
The push for net neutrality has occasioned the use of a range of motley metaphors -- tollbooths on highways, "slotting fees" at supermarkets -- but it was Peterman who came through with the clearest analogy I've yet heard: think of the Internet as the new TV.
Twenty years ago, Peterman recalled, a casual viewer could flip on the tube and find independently produced shows like Roseanne, Cosby, The Wonder Years and Cheers. Why? Because existing syndication rules were designed to promote diversity by favoring producers, not networks. That way, independent studios could gamble on all kinds of original programming, because if even one was successfully syndicated, it was a worthwhile venture.
The system we know today is quite different. Since FOX successfully lobbied away those rules in the 1990s, networks have become both studios and producers as well. And with that change, Peterman argues, came "inevitable stifling of creativity, and diversity," because when networks were allowed to control both content and distribution, independent producers had to sit at the sidelines.
Right now, anyone can create and upload video content online, and download it without restraints -- and it's hard to imagine it being otherwise. In fact, as Peterman notes, after the writer's strike ended, some writers just decided to keep producing for the Internet, because it was freer and -- as he puts it -- they didn't have "some humorless executive watching them." Obviously as well, there are myriad ways other creators and organizations would be affected if networks like Comcast and Verizon are allowed to continue slowing certain kinds of traffic, which is why Skype, Amazon.com, and a multitude of others are lobbying for net neutrality. But at a basic level, that's the driving issue: preserving the ability of any producer to innovate, and correspondingly, freedom of consumer choice.
--Te-Ping Chen
