Becket and Net Neutrality – Unbar The Door!

Unbar the door!

Last night we stayed home and watched the movie Becket, with Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole.

Great film.

It’s a historical drama based on fact.  Henry II, Norman King of England elevates his friend and drinking companion Thomas Becket to the job of Archbishop of Canterbury in the hopes that Becket will become Henry’s ally in taxing the Church.

Once in the job, however, Becket comes to believe that his loyalty to God is greater than his loyalty to the King.  

It’s a conflict that will haunt English history until Henry VIII finally makes the break with The Vatican and puts the Monarchy clearly over the Church some 500 years later.

TS Eliot wrote his masterpiece, Murder in the Cathedral about this moment in English history. I quote it a length below, but it is worth reading slowly – for we live in an era in which we don’t.

Unbar the door!
You think me reckless, desperate and mad.
You argue by results, as this world does,
To settle if an act be good or bad.
You defer to the fact. For every life and every act
Consequence of good and evil can be shown.
And as in time results of many deeds are blended
So good and evil in the end become confounded.
It is not in time that my death shall be known;
It is out of time that my decision is taken
If you call that decision
To which my whole being gives entire consent.
I give my life
To the Law of God above the Law of Man.
Those who do not the same
How should they know what I do?
How should you know what I do? Yet how much more
Should you know than these madmen beating on the door.
Unbar the door! unbar the door!
We are not here to triumph by fighting, by stratagem, or by resistance.
Not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast
And have conquered. We have only to conquer
Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.
Now is the triumph of the Cross, now
Open the door! I command it. OPEN THE DOOR!

Now, what made  this interesting, besides seeing Burton, O’Toole and Sir John Gielgud (as the King of France) was that we watched this on netflix online.  We used to get the DVDs, but now, having linked our computer to a 52″ plasma monitor and a massive sound surround system, we can watch pretty much any movie we want any time we want.

The DVD player looks like it is going to go the way of the record player (and the CD player for that matter).

The locus of the plot (and indeed the locus of English history for nearly 500 years) would be the tension between Church and State.  Who would triumph?  

Conversely, with the arrival of both the Obama Administrations FCC regulations to protect Net Neutrality and Sen. John McCain’s legislation to block the FCC rulings, we have a 21st Century version of the Becket/Henry II conflict.  Where will power reside?

The carriers like Verizon would like to be able to regulate what you get over the web and how fast you get it.  As they built the pipes, they see themselves as their ‘owner’.  You are the renter.  They want control.

The Obama administration ran on a platform of protecting Net Neutrality – that is, equal access to the web, which would turn Verizon and their friends into little more than dumb pipes.  

In the penultimate act of British history, Henry VIII trumps the Church and takes primacy.  Of course, the Glorious Revolution in England, the French Revolution in France and the American Revolution in the US all rendered the Church/Crown conflict moot.

In the end it was the people who took control and dominance over both.

Perhaps, if we are fortunate, the web conflict will resolve itself in the same way.

Of course, that particular resolution took 700 years to work itself out.