Last night, a friend of mine and I went out to see TRON: Legacy. After purchasing a soda twice the size of my head and choking on the so-called "3D Enhancement Surcharge", we sat down in the theatre several rows ahead of a busy teenage couple. We were then treated to an involved visual metaphor that proves beyond a shred of doubt that the writers behind it have a better grasp of the importance of absolute non-discrimination network neutrality than the U.S. government.
Net neutrality is the practice of disallowing your ISP to block access to sites or content based on guidelines they set or purely on whim. Given the legal opportunity, many providers are willing to latch on to discriminate your access pricing based on the data you're trying to get at. For example, if the company that owns your ISP also operates a paid media streaming network, they might offer you free or cheap access to their option while charging you exorbitant amounts for access to Netflix, or perhaps even blocking it entirely. With lax restrictions on the commercialization of data would come the ultimate ruination of arguably one of the single greatest achievements of mankind: almost-universal access to free information.
If you've ever used the internet, you can probably see why this might be a bad thing.
[ Spoilers Ahead - Skip if you've seen the movie.]
TRON: Legacy is the story of a brilliant programmer and computer specialist (Sam) who is bitter about the moral collapse of his equally brilliant father's (Kevin) company following his disappearance decades ago. Our introduction to him is mid-vigilante mission as he infiltrates the offices of ENCOM, a software company purported in the first film to have stolen much of Kevin's work and used it as their own. While the company is preparing to release the latest version of their operating system for sale, Sam jacks it and releases it onto the web for everyone to download at no charge, carrying on his father's beliefs that his work always be free and open-source.
After receiving a page from a line that has been disconnected for decades, Sam makes his way to his father's old arcade, left unopened for that much time. Inside, he finds himself in a secret office that once belonged to his father, and accidentally causes the machinery inside to transport him into a digital world that Kevin created in 1989, which was the reason for his disappearance.
This digital world is a sort of utopia, where everything is very strictly managed and the slightest imperfections are weeded out through contests and games for the amusement of the "programs" that reside in the world. During the games, Sam finds himself in the company of a clone of Kevin by the name of CLU, an antagonistic program that Kevin created in his likeness with instructions to create the perfect world. Sam escapes from him with the help of a female program named Quorra and eventually finds himself reunited with his father, where he learns the story of his disappearance and of TRON, another program he created for security but who was corrupted by the strict society CLU created. Kevin also tells of a breakthrough he made in 1989 where his digital world spontaneously created a new form of life without any outside interference that he calls Isomorphic Algorithms. This new life could have represented leap-and-bound breakthroughs in science and medicine and every other field in the real world, but they were destroyed in a racial genocide executed by CLU in his continued instructions to create the perfect world.
With the intent to return his family to the real world, Sam convinced Kevin along to the quickly-closing portal that will take them home. Along the way they are met with resistance from CLU and his forces, who want information from Kevin on how he and his army can themselves make it into the real world. On the way there, TRON has a change of heart and assists them in getting away from CLU's troops, but CLU is waiting for them at the portal. Sam and the last remaining Isomorphic Algorithm escape through the portal, while Kevin sacrifices himself to destroy CLU.
[End Obligatory Plot Summary]
Now to make some comparisons.
Kevin Flynn: A brilliant, technologically-oriented man who is an advocate of software and information being open. His benevolent nature is often capitalized on, i.e. his software being stolen and sold by ENCOM, his virtual world being overthrown and controlled entirely by CLU. Kevin represents developers and online business owners, who, under legislation that opposes net neutrality, stand to have service providers capitalize and profit off of their work with or without their permission.
Sam Flynn: Sam represents someone caught in the crossfire of the neutrality wars. He is very much an advocate of open information and his father's work, so his involvement is on very much a personal level (his father being taken from him as a result of closed communications). He stands to be screwed over by closed network control, but he doesn't have a business or developer stake in the game.
CLU: CLU is representative of the entire body focused on commercialization of internet properties. He has yet to have grasped that imperfection is a form of perfection, and through his calculated attempts to make his world "better" (through excessive regulation and control) he slowed, stopped and crushed all third-party efforts to innovate and learn. The Isomorphic Algorithm race could have changed the course of the future, but they were a new variable to the equation that had no place in his perfect world, so he destroyed them. If the internet becomes a tiered system of access, the constant innovation that is so much a part of it will cease to exist.
Quorra: Quorra is the last and only Isomorphic Algorithm to survive CLU's ethnic cleansing. She is the entity representative of the innovation that net commercialization (CLU) seeks to crush out of existence in his perfect world. Instead of using the information she wields to advance technology, Kevin keeps her in hiding to himself instead of "publishing" her, so to speak. In the same way, anti-net neutrality laws will discourage many creative people, dramatically slowing the expansion rate of human knowledge. Near the end of the movie, she is protected from CLU by Kevin and Sam, advocates protecting their work from being controlled or destroyed.
In the end, Sam and Quorra escape to the real world, while Kevin sacrifices himself and destroys both CLU and the entirety of the world he created. This is a metaphor for the developer, the creative mind, ultimately losing to the consumerist platform he is forced to put his work on to share it. He created something beautiful and worthwhile, but money-hungry companies turned it against him by making up a problem to fix that would make them money (or in CLU's case, perfection) and in the process, ruined both the creator and his creations.
What we can learn from TRON: Legacy is that in the end, nobody will win if the internet is allowed to be restricted in the way these proposals suggest it should be. With charges for "premium" web services and discrimination of data, the creativity and sharing of free information that the internet is based on will die out, and it will become a purely capitalist breeding ground owned and controlled by corporations. That isn't the web future that Tim Berners-Lee envisioned when he conceptualized the World Wide Web. It's a world where Google is censored and you have to pay a fee every month to watch videos on YouTube or check your Facebook.
With all of this in mind, I ask one thing: Make your votes count. Call up your representatives, make your voice heard. No matter what they tell you, the internet isn't broken - it's a powerful, creative entity, and they fear that. You can find more information on net neutrality by going to http://theopeninter.net/ , and learn how to help fight internet censorship in general by going to http://demandprogress.org/blacklist/.
-LBD
"That's Tron. He fights for the users." - TRON, 1982
