I admit, that in the eyes of my Media Studies teacher, I am the enemy. For one, I haven't picked up a serious journalistic publication in God knows how long, but that's normal now right? How many NYU students are going to sign in the Times delivery guy every Sunday really? Worse however, is the fact that I have no particular interest in these publication's websites either. I find them bloated, biased, and clunky, and don't even get me started on paywalls.

The majority of online content that I consume comes from RSS feeds. Examples of popular RSS feeds are popular sites like Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon that rely upon users to vote up links to the most happening things on the web each day. These sites feature a strong community spirit, and favor citizens summaries over journalistic fact based writing. As a result, I hardly ever visit nytimes.com, cnn.com, or any other corporate based online media content.

I bring this up because we are currently facing a crisis that could tip the scales back in the direction of media hegemony, stifling the minority opinions expressed on these sites. It seems you can't throw a rock in Washington without hitting someone passionately uttering the words "healthcare", "public option" or "Hitler" these days, but online there is a different issue on the tips of internet users fingers.

"Net Neutrality" is the coined phrase for a new Obama supported initiative that will ban the Internet Service Providers from giving preference to one site over another. This is how things have worked since the dawn of the internet. Whether you are Joe the Plumber or Ted Turner, if you can pay the annual fees for bandwidth, your sites will load at equal speed, and be treated as equal domains by your ISP. However, as the internet becomes an increasingly invaluable corporate resource, companies are starting to flirt with the idea of going into cahoots with the ISPs, and paying for preferential treatment.

As young and informed internet addicts, we must rise against this in the best way that we can. If the internet is not regulated, it is likely that what we will end up with is a glorified version of television, where public access channels struggle and fail miserably to compete with slick major networks. Admitted computer illiterate John McCain is opposing the idea of net neutrality, following the silly old doctrine of Capitalist competition in all things (but healthcare). Don't let these dinosaurs glaze over this extremely important issue in the name of an outdated political philosophy. Write a blog about it bros.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/174221/mccain_moves_to_block_fcc_net_neutrality.html