We can let a big sigh of relief, for now anyway. The Obama nomination of Genachowski is seen as someone who will maintain and push forward the democratization of the Internet.

John Silver, executive director of Free Press said:

We share Obama’s goals of creating a more diverse, democratic media system and providing fast, affordable, open Internet access for everyone. We greatly look forward to working with Mr. Genachowski to put the president-elect’s plan into action.

Via TV Week

On the issue of net neutrality

The nomination of Genachowski as chairman was widely anticipated and quickly applauded by proponents of net neutrality, who hope an Obama FCC will move decisively to limit what telecoms can and cannot do with internet traffic on their networks.

via Wired

I bring this up today because the FCC is in the process of defending Net Neutrality against Comcast this Friday. We’ll post the results of their ruling them.

Currently every bit of information sent over the Internet is treated the exact same, no priority is given to anything. The email the US President goes just the same as one I send. Some congressmen/women in D.C. believe in-correctly that the volume of traffic currently experiencing is causing massive delays in the deliver of some of these information bits.

To be far, there is more traffic on the Internet than ever (thanks to video sharing sites like you-tube). Yet everything is still clipping along just fine.

So why the problem here?

Major tel-com companies stand to make millions, if not billions, if net neutrality falls apart. It would allow them to set a priority level for ever bit of data that goes across the Internet. This priority will come at a premium price beyond the reach of the Church (save maybe the holy sea).

This will create a two-tiered Internet where the tel-com companies are able to charge on both sides of the service. Companies that host websites would potentially be able to pay for premium service, as well as someone browsing the Internet.

So, how does this affect the church?

One of my biggest passions right now is to see the church take the Internet and become a driving force of net-culture. While this is a huge hard to measure goal, if net neutrality falls apart (as Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska wants) this will become out of reach of not-for-profit organizations like the church.

Imagine if now in addition to creating dynamic content for a web-outreach or documentary to be posted online you need to raise more money to allow people to view it. This doesn’t help anyone but the companies with deep enough pockets to do whatever they want anyway.

What do we do?

As of now there isn’t much to do aside from be informed and join the coalition over at SaveTheInterenet.com.