Free File Viewers For Movies, Photos, Audio, PDF, Word Clone

FILE VIEWER INFO

ARTICLE COMMENT By Email - On Discussion Board

 

What is up with the companies in this country? It used to be that someone would start a small company and they would be happy to make a nice living for themselves and their employees. Now many companies have become world giants and they want to run our lives and make all the decisions for us. Take Net Neutrality. In case you don't know what this is, it is the right for one person to get on the net and be able to talk to who he wants and look at what he wants and even post want he wants. The Internet is made up of many sites that are run by ordinary people, people like myself. This gives the person that is on the net the right to go where ever they want to. They can look at any site in the world. Many big companies want to put a stop to this. This is sort of what they did to radio. When radio first started anyone could broadcast, then came the rules from the FCC and in a few years only a couple of big companies could afford to broadcast. The little guy was gone.

The big companies that want to cripple out net access and cut off the little guys are mostly phone companies and multimedia giants. They think that they should be the ones running the net. Sure they do, that would eliminate all the Internet phone companies that are offering cheap service such as Vonage, Cablevision and others. They think, and rightly so, that in years to come that no one will want to pay exorbitant phone rates anymore and rather than lower them, they think it will be cheaper to bribe Congressmen and Senators and get them to create a bill allowing them to control the net. They have a plan for how their Internet would work and I am afraid that most people wouldn't like it. It would be more like watching television. You would have access only to a couple of hundred sites that they pick and if you wanted to go anywhere else, such as my site, you would have to pay extra money.

In order for me to maintain my site I would have to pay thousands and maybe tens of thousands of dollars a year if not more, so I would be eliminated. Even if I could pay the same as I am now, angry Internet travelers wouldn't want to pay anymore than they were. Oh they would have their rates raised also. There would no longer be Internet access for the $39.95 that most of us pay per month. It would be more like phone service prices where you would pay by the amount of Internet time you were online, or the amount of bytes you downloaded. This could become a very expensive proposition. They would have a monopoly on our Internet services. We have a few people in our corner and I am sure that President Obama, who loves to use the Internet is probably one of them. The problem is that greed, the same greed that runs Washington, the greed that gets them to pass bills that protect huge oil companies and others is rearing its ugly head again.

The phone companies claim that they are the ones responsible for the Internet and anyone that knows anything about the Internet knows it was not them at all. The only connection they had to the Internet was the connection from the phone line into the Internet. They could have competed with online telephone service, heck they are big enough to compete with anyone. They might have even been able to undercut all those cable companies offering phone service, but this would have meant giving up the goose that laid the golden egg. The telephone system is one of the most automated systems in the world. This means that it generates an awful lot of profit. They are not willing to give up this profit, they would much rather make you suffer.

The phone and media companies have a legal argument that they keep stressing. It is that their first amendment rights are being violated by stopping them from taking over total control of as many media outlets as they want and this includes the Internet. Yeah never mind about our rights. These companies claim that they know what is good for us. There plan was put into effect over a decade ago and here is how it worked. The first thing that these companies did was go to the FCC to try and get rule changes. If they couldn't they went to Congress. If Congress didn't pass the bills they wanted, they went to the courts. It reminds me of the protection plan for this country, land based missiles, submarine based missiles and bombers with cruise missiles. One thing is for sure, our rights are under attack and that attack is a three pronged one, launched by some of the very richest companies. The idea is to erode the laws and rules on ownership until they are a mere empty shell and then they will move in with speed and force that will make your head spin.

Why have most of the companies in this country become so greedy? These communications companies are far from being the only ones. The communications companies have already been able to get the rules changed that stated one company could not own two television stations in the same market. In 1996 the rules for radio station ownership were almost all thrown out. It is getting to the point where one company will be able to control you newspaper, radio and television stations. Now that the Internet is gaining sites that contain streaming media, these companies are having fits. Do you think that cable companies want you to be able to watch programs for free? I don't think that you even have to answer that question.

One thing that we all have to do if we want to keep the Internet the way it is, is to stay on top of the problem and write to our Congressmen and Senators when bills come up that will effect our access and allow these giants to take over. Phone calls to the offices of our representatives are also very good. I don't know about you, but I enjoy being able to go anywhere I want on the Internet and also speaking my mind.