There’s a classic scene in The Matrix, where Morpheus (the Laurence Fishburne character) offers Neo (played by Keanu Reeves), a fateful choice. He holds out two pills. Take the blue pill, he says, and you go back to a life of clock-punching drudgery where your every move is monitored. Take the red one, and you get spaceships, kung-fu and a leather-clad Carrie-Anne Moss. Take away the martial arts, and Morpheus could just as well be describing the monumental choice Americans are facing today over the future of the internet. Only it’s not science fiction. Over the next few years, Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and the next president will shape the internet for a generation. Down one path is a closed internet experience tightly controlled by a small handful of giant corporations. Down the other is the open internet, with all its possibilities. Who wants you to swallow the blue pill? Meet the nation’s biggest telecom and cable companies, a cartel that dominates 99% of the US residential market for high-speed internet access. These firms – led by AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner – want to exploit their gatekeeper power to decide what you can […]