Made Loud — Indie Underground Bands, Music, Downloads, Community

Net neutrality, as its more commonly dubbed, refers to a network that doesn't place any restrictions on content or connectivity. This is a tenet that most Web surfers take for granted. No matter which service provider you use, your experience of the Internet is essentially the same (notwithstanding the real world limitations of temporary service outages or slow dial-up connectivity). Whether you use Comcast, Qwest, or some other ISP, you can navigate on over to your favorite band's MySpace page and listen to streaming audio from their upcoming album. Or you could click your way to Last.fm and listen to some cool new tunes and make a friend. For most music fans of today, these activities come as naturally as eating and sleeping.

What would happen, though, if the vast multinational corporation that owns your service provider were to create their own social networking site that also promotes interactivity between music and people? Obviously, it would be in that company's best interest to lure MySpace and Last.fm users to its site. One way to do this would be to simply create a better site. Another would be to grant far less bandwidth to all URLs from its competitors' domains, leading to excruciatingly slow upload times. Suddenly, MySpace is a lot less appetizing, and impatient browsers will be much more likely to seek an alternative source for discovering the hottest new sounds around. Further, what if this alternate platform decides it can make more money by charging users to access certain higher-tech features? Or maybe the site's search engines will yield results only for those acts whose labels have paid a promotional fee.

These and many possible scenarios have inspired over 900 musical acts to join the Future of Music Coalition's Rock the Net campaign. Major label acts like R.E.M. and indie acts such as Rogue Wave are among its founders, and their mission is to ensure net neutrality. Earlier this year, OK Go singer Damian Kulash acted as the campaign's spokesperson when addressing the House Judiciary Committee's Task Force on Competition policy and Antitrust Laws. Rightly, he credited his band's success to the level playing field of a neutral Internet. In 2005, they became a huge phenomenon when seemingly everyone was linking to their video for "A Million Ways," which found the indie pop quartet in a backyard, dancing to a series of complexly choreographed moves. Discovered by a handful of tastemakers, word was disseminated almost entirely through blogs and by individual word-of-mouth. Before long, the video was getting heavy rotation on VH1. Prior to the Internet boom, such a discovery would have been extremely unlikely. Without net neutrality, the odds of a similar phenomenon occurring again would be slim.

Two different pieces of recently proposed legislation — The Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006 and the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006 —failed to become law, leaving net neutrality vulnerable. In 2007, Comcast took a stab at de-neutralizing the Internet by targeting BitTorrent and delaying uploads from them. Earlier this year, the FCC stepped in and said they would prevent broadband networks from tampering with their subscribers' service, and Comcast subsequently discontinued their attack on BitTorrent. Without a specific law to enforce, though, the FCC's powers on this issue remain unclear, and loopholes are waiting to be discovered. This is why Rock the Net continues to be an important watchdog, supporting a level playing field that gives indie music sources the chance to compete with the giant entertainment corporations.

Opponents of proposed legislation to protect net neutrality claim that it's a solution looking for a problem. Hey, if the levee ain't broke, why fix it, right? There are also practical, financial concerns about discouraging competition among service providers. As Simon Wilkie, head of the Center for Communications Law and Policy at USC, points out: "Bandwidth isn’t free, so there has to be some incentive to deploy." Also, advocates of net competition worry that net neutrality restrictions might actually hamper future technological growth. Certainly, a balance between protection and encouragement of development is needed. Legislators need to find a way to ensure the aspects of an online free market economy that inspire technological advancements, while making sure that the corporate network owners aren't able to monopolize the Internet.

Until net neutrality is guaranteed by law, all the major service providers will be leaning heavily on Congress to create legislation that will erode the free and open Internet we enjoy today. The neutral playing field is already eroding. Did you know that MySpace was purchased in 2005 by Fox Broadcasting owner Rupert Murdoch and that Last.fm was gobbled up by CBS in 2006? We're already in danger of big business dictating our online music experience. When that happens, the major labels will be following closely behind, taking advantage of what would almost certainly be the equivalent of the rampant payola that plagued radio for decades. Instead of lining the pockets of promoters to get singles into the Top 40, the big four labels will align with network providers, who could then redirect unwitting customers to their partnering label's products while littering the Web with bandwidth-hogging video ads.

So, if you one day find that MadeLoud is strangely slow to load, but the latest teen pop star is dancing across the top of your screen to the strains of some new pre-fab hit single, then you'll know it's happened. The Goliaths will have won, and all the slings and barbs from a billion blogging Davids won't bring them down, because their words —along with the fun, inventive, homespun video of the next great indie band —will go unheard. Rock the Net aims to keep this from transpiring. Their July 2008 benefit CD is their latest effort to raise awareness and funds. Featuring acts such as Bright Eyes, Aimee Mann, and Wilco, supporting net neutrality has never sounded so good. Streaming audio is available at the Future of Music Coalition website's Rock the Net headquarters.

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