Net Neutrality is something I haven't worried about lately. I was, all of a sudden, wondering why this is after our last class. I've decided that, either I'm much less informed than I should be, or that the political economy of the internet is really not at stake as much as our in class video may have led us to believe.

It really is in the interest of many large corporations (maybe minus some ISPs) to facilitate user expression through weblogs, video logs, independent websites and everything else user generated. For companies that make large revenues off of online advertising, such as google, Yahoo and even Microsoft, user generated content that can have advertisements attached are an incredibly large source of revenue.

Clay Shirky, a new media theorist you could say, writes about the long tail in an old essay of his. The long tail, he argues, is what makes many online companies very profitable. What the long tail describes is a graph in which the head (composed of very popular items) is short while the tail (composed of countless unpopular items) is extremely long. Shirky claims that the area under the head and the tail are actually equal implying that unpopular websites may generate just as many page views in total as the top 5 websites online for example.

To understand Long Tail it might help to look at the popular music scene... Beyonce sells 4 million records a year lets say. BUT, all those bands you've never heard of sell 5 million albums a year. If there were a way to consolidate all the indie bands' music to sell in one place online, a company could generate large profits (Itunes, Emusic etc.) Because digital inventory can be duplicated or created for next to free (mp3s or blogs), companies can sell or support numerous amounts of data that is only recognized by smaller communities.

Many unpopular websites are blogs made by users such as you and me. We have 10 readers at most, but WE are millions of people. slightly larger blogs may have 100 readers per day. Companies like Google make huge profits by posting adds on these smaller blogs and websites. they may only make a few bucks off each one, but that totals out to millions.

my point is that it is in many corporations interest to keep the net neutral and have everyone involved in generating content. Even if ISPs do not share the same feelings, many companies (google included) own massive amounts of bandwidth, and will continue to buy it as long as it allows them to profit of of user generated content.

I think the common person is at an advantage here, because we have large corps fighting our war against ISPs for us. I would be quite surprised to see the Net falling under control of AT&T any time soon.