Image from here.

This is a story you don’t care about.

It’s also a story you think I’ve gone insane on.

But it’s the true story of how your freedoms as Americans will actually be taken away from you. And you will all just gladly hand them over.

Americans are a proud bootstrap kind of people. Our forefathers left everything to come to the New World to be in control of their destiny.

That’s been our modus operandi ever since. Whether you are Conservative or Liberal, you make your own path. In the words of the great American crooner, “I did it my way.”

We all have American institutions we vehemently stand up for and would probably protect with our lives.

Conservatives love guns and capitalism.

Liberals love nature and government institutions.

But there are icons in our society that we all love. Almost no one questions their role.

Nike and Apple are great examples. No matter how cheaply they demand their products be put together and at what cost to people’s lives, if you’re rich and cool you have Nike’s on your feet and an iPod in your hand. Conservative or Liberal.

Then there are ubiquitous institutions. These are institutions that are so ingrained in our souls that they are nearly in our blood. They flow through us and around us in ways we don’t truly understand.

Primarily, they are ABC, CBS and NBC.

These 3 initial companies, for the last 60 years, have told us what is important, what is entertaining, and what we should be feeling.

They shape our lives. For 60 years we all have gladly let them do it.

It’s been OK because if we didn’t like what they were saying we could just turn them off. Not that we ever did.

But imagine this… imagine one day you come home from yet another exhausting day at work. You sit down in your Lazy Boy recliner, grab the remote and click in the TV.

NBC is on because you fell asleep watching Jay Leno the night before.

Instead of the constant, never ending stream of content that you could trust to get for the last 60 years, you get a black screen that says: “You have been cut off.”

That would be disconcerting. Maybe even a little creepy.

But screw them. You have a hundred other channels.

You go to ABC: “You have been cut off.”

CBS: “You have been cut off.”

Fox: “You have been cut off.”

CNN: “You have been cut off.”

Comedy Central: “You have been cut off.”

Cartoon Network: “You have been cut off.”

That’s freaky. In a bit of a panic you go to your laptop.

You fire up Google: “You have been cut off.”

Bing: “You have been cut off.”

Yahoo: “You have been cut off.”

You have just been universally wiped from the grid.

And let me ask you: Who are you going to call? What right do you have to any of these free enterprise channels?

You have no right to them. They serve you at their pleasure.

Your access to information is completely in the hands of enterprises that are completely within their jurisdiction to take it away from you at any time. And furthermore, it is completely legal for them to all work in concert together… globally.

Years ago, there was a search engine optimization tool called: Web Position Gold.

One of the things it did was run search engine ranking reports. People would run them constantly.

Google didn’t like these because they were sucking down bandwidth with no chance of being able to sell advertising. These Web Position Gold spiders never clicked the ads.

So Google would ban the IP addresses of people using Web Position Gold.

These people were completely cut off from using Google.

They were violating the terms of service of using Google. And Google had every right to do this.

They are a private enterprise. They determine who gets access to their content. And who doesn’t.

I’m telling you: This is the fear you should have.

I hear people constantly talk about how Google knows too much about us. How we need to protect our privacy.

I believe we have a much greater enemy. Being cut off globally is the greater risk.

And we’ll all just give it away in the name of private enterprise.

This global cutoff is happening in America right now. Today.

You see, if you have chosen not to purchase a TV package from some provider, you are not legally allowed to watch any portion of the Olympics online in America.

Every event of the Olympics is being streamed online for the first time ever.
But NBC has bought all the rights to all Olympic access in America.

Their rules are that you can’t watch the Olympics online instead of watching them on Network TV. You have to purchase a network TV plan in order to get Olympic access online. In some cases a basic cable package is not enough of a package. You’ll have to upgrade.

On top of this, they have struck a deal with the British government and the Chinese Communist government to block Americans from accessing their online coverage.

Great Britain and the Chinese governments are streaming the Olympics for all their people to see. But they have set up firewalls to block all other countries (primarily the NBC audience) from getting access to that coverage.

The true risk in your lives, from a big brother perspective, is this.

“If you don’t buy what we say, we will globally turn you off.”

This is not science fiction. This isn’t something that could happen in the future. It is happening to Americans in America right now. And it’s completely legal.

On top of that, you think I’m the crazy one. You think I’m the one who doesn’t get it.

“NBC paid for the exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics in America. How could they make money on that if everyone could view them online for free?”

I think it’s a little weird that a global athletic event of worldwide countries got sold to the highest private bidder. But whatever, that’s how we do it.

What blows my mind is that NBC still can’t figure out how to monetize the web.

And so, because of their incompetence, they set up a global blockade with all other countries to block Americans from watching the Olympics at all.

“You have been cut off.”