By: Linda McQuaig

  One of the most surprising things about the Time Warner/America Online deal is that everybody seemed so surprised by it.
  What's the big surprise? What could have been more predictable? The deal simply follows the most fundamental rule of capitalism: if you leave big companies on their own - as surely as night follows day - they will buy each other up. That's true of the Internet business in the new millennium as much as it was true of the railway business many moons ago.
  Yes, it confirms that the Internet has arrived and taken over, and that any sentence that doesn't end in "dot-com" might as well not be spoken. So much for the notion of the Internet as a tool for reviving democracy, a vehicle for letting the disenfranchised speak out and organize.
 

Huge, powerful corporate interests are rushing to gain control of the Internet, in the same way that they've long controlled the old-fashioned media

  Of course people can still speak out - just as they can use the mail, put out their own newspapers and occasionally even get a word in edge-wise on TV. But huge, powerful corporate interests are rushing to gain control of the Internet in the same way they've long controlled the old-fashioned media. Other viewpoints will be there too, but increasingly pushed to the margin, barely audible above the relentless din of corporate culture.
  So where does this leave us?
  If you listen to the media hype, and how can you avoid it, unless you live in an abandoned shack without a satellite dish, it's hard not to feel pretty small and powerless. Don't feel bad about feeling that way. That's the way you're supposed to feel - cowed, awe-struck and willing to let the new media mega-barons run the world.
  There's another response you could have, but it's hopelessly out of date so forget it. It calls for things like more regulation.
  Last year the CRTC decided not to regulate the Internet in Canada. Maybe that decision should now be reviewed, to make sure that the Internet of the future can in fact be used as a tool for reviving democracy and promoting Canadian culture.
  At least Internet providers in Canada should be obliged to direct some of their profits toward funding Canadian content. Maybe we should also consider stronger powers for government to prevent mergers that involve too much concentration of power. Watch for the opposite - pressure to get rid of our laws restricting acquisition of cable companies so that we too can enter the big leagues of media mergers.
  We could also consider a general strengthening of the public sphere - strengthening the role of government in promoting education, culture, the arts, the CBC - in the hope of keeping alive some flicker of independence from the pre-packaged corporate culture engulfing us.
  In other words, we could consider strengthening our collective power as citizens in the face of the unchecked, growing power of private interests. It's an old idea, as old as democracy itself.
  But for those of us who don't own a cable company or an Internet firm, it remains a pretty compelling idea, even if it doesn't end in "dot.com."

Linda McQuaig is an economic journalist and author of many books, including Shooting the Hippo and The Wealthy Banker's Wife. She currently writes a biweekly column for the National Post. This commentary used by permission of Linda McQuaig and CBC radio.

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