I'm Bill Moyers. It's good to have your ear. Thanks for joining us.

The Internet as we know it. Going, going, gone.

For most Americans, they have no choice for all the information data entertainment coming into the house other than their local cable monopoly.

And here we have a situation where that monopoly potentially can pick and choose

winners and losers, decide what you see, and charge whatever it wants.

So they're subject to neither oversight nor competition.

So the average American should care because it's a pocketbook issue.

It's also an innovation issue.

Who's going to get to decide what new things

come into our houses? I don't like the idea that somebody can control traffic to control

traffic is to control information and also to control kind of message.

Thanks for joining us. If I told you that sovereign powers were about to put a toll booth on the street that leads from your house to the nearest interstate,

allowing your richest neighbors to buy their way to the open road while you were sent to the slow lane, you would no doubt be outraged.

Well, prepare to scream bloody murder because something like that could

be happening to the Internet. Yes, the Internet, your Internet, our Internet, the electronic public square

that ostensibly allows everyone an equal chance to be heard. This Democratic Highway to

cyberspace has thrived on the idea of net neutrality,

that the Internet should be available to all without preferential treatment, without preferential

treatment. But net neutrality is now at risk, and from its supposed guardian, the Federal

Communications Commission, the FCC chairman,

Tom Wheeler, is circulating potential new rules that reportedly would allow Internet service

providers to charge higher fees for faster access. So the big companies like Verizon and

...