Joe is Network Neutrality

Network Neutrality is the latest big media buzzword. In case you don't know what is meant by "network neutrality," consider yourself obliviously happy and skip this article. It will only depress you. Or, if you hate yourself and want to die, click here to read Wikipedia's article on it.

Here's the deal: Your evil Joe-controlled cellphone company wants to bill certain high-traffic sites like Google (not evil) or MySpace (evil,) to let you access these sites on your cell phone. Of course, you, as an educated consumer, get all miffed about this. You whine and make noises, but that's all you can do. Because, since to get your latest-model-tiny-ringtoney-flippy-cameraphoney-mp3-playing-so-you-can-annoy-me-in-the-theater-device, you had to mortgage your house, sell a kidney, and timeshare your soul out to the devil, and you're locked in a contract which says the cell phone company gets to burn down your house if you try to switch providers.

But the cell-phone companies realize that a lot of educated consumers, like yourself, will do pretty much anything to be able to access MySpace while you're sitting right behind me in the theater, so you can listen to your jail-bait girlfriend's ex-boyfriend's garage bands mp3s on your speakerphone. Anything. And they are kinda afraid of that. So they don't really wanna piss you off, but they DO wanna charge you more.

So these evil cell phone companies use some of Joe's favorite reverse psychology tactics. Using secret minions in Congress, they start a campaign to pass bills legislating the Internet. Making it all free and neutral and stuff. Seems harmless, right? Yeah, free Internet, that's gotta be good.

But what's really happening is this -- and this the part where I use my intimate knowledge of Joe to help you out (really, you should pay me) -- see, with great legislation comes great loopholes. So you make a seemingly harmless laws like these:

"The goals of process-based neutrality are achieved when networks forward packets without regard to their size, purpose or content, except as these characteristics relate to network management imperatives."

"The resource-based approach takes into account the requirements of the generating and consuming applications in order to maximize the number of network usages with satisfactory outcomes and fairly distribute finite resources across the widest range of uses."

So let's break this down:

1) "Networks forward packets without regard ..., except as these characteristics relate to network management imperatives."

Oh wow! What an idea. Yeah, we'll be forwarding the packets, except when we don't feel like it. Great idea.

2) "takes into account the requirements ... in order to maximize the number of network usages with satisfactory outcomes and fairly distribute finite resources across the widest range of uses."

Good one. "Woops! Google's making our network slow. Seems like if they don't pay us to improve our network, we won't be able to give our customers 'satisfactory outcomes!' Bummer."

See what I mean? Devious, isn't it. See, the evil cell phone companies learned how to manipulate people from Joe. They know that the first step in taking away peoples' freedoms is to make laws protecting them. Build them laws nice and good, with built in loop holes, so we can do what we want, anyway. And you can't do anything about it, cuz its the law! (And all the competition is doing it too, so why bother switching providers? And hey! Your cameraphone has more pixels now! Now you can take pictures of your oversize penis (more pixels - more bigger) and upload it to MySpace on your cellphone. Of course, MySpace doesn't pay us quite enough for all that bandwidth, so there will be a small surcharge on your bill this month. Woops! You went over your limit, so your surcharge gets a higher multiplier."

So before you pick up your cellphone to call your congressman and tell him you changed you mind about that whole net neutrally thing, consider this: go get a hammer, and hit your cellphone with it.

Maybe more than once. Joe is in your cellphone.