Protection rackets are as old as commerce. You build yourself a nice little business, and along comes someone with a broadsword or a baseball bat or a gun, telling you it’d be a shame if something happened to wreck all your hard work. But help is at hand: for a percentage of your take, you can avoid any trouble. There won’t be a fire; there won’t be a strike; the goods and services you need will be delivered on time.

That’s against the law, of course. If you’re a criminal organization running a protection racket and you want to stay out of jail, you rely on intimidation and paying off the cops. If you’re a giant cable or telecom outfit, you pay off Congress and get your racket legalized.

A number of people have written about the effort by the nation’s largest internet providers to create a two-tiered internet, one where web sites pay the providers not to interfere with their content and services, and where the internet providers can block or slow down sites they don’t like or who don’t pay.

But nobody is calling it what it is: a protection racket. The internet providers are acting like street corner thugs. If you run a web-based business or content site and you can’t or won’t pay, you’re screwed. If you rely on a site for content or services and that site can’t or won’t pay the protection, or your internet provider simply doesn’t like the site, you’re screwed.

Under current law, internet providers are required to offer their customers equal access to every site on the web; that’s known as Net Neutrality. Under the proposed law, the providers could facilitate or block access at their pleasure. And the cops, Congress, are eagerly lapping up the bribes: an amendment to the COPE Act (Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act) ensuring Net Neutrality was defeated in the House Energy & Commerce Committee despite the efforts of Congressman Ed Markey and a coalition of other House representatives and grass roots Net Neutrality supporters.

I’m coming late to this issue. Other people know more about it and can provide better information. You should read what they have to say, and if you’re as concerned as I am and they are, you should join the effort to guarantee your continued access to the content and services you rely on now. This isn’t a partisan issue, although Republicans in Congress are heavily tilted toward the internet providers: if the effort fails, Republican internet users will be just as much affected as Democrats.

All I’m here to say is that I know a racket when I see one, and the what the big internet providers are after is a racket. I know a thug when I see one, and the big internet providers are acting like thugs. I know a crooked cop when I see one, and the Congressional opponents of Net Neutrality are bought and paid for by the thugs. But like any protection racket, the key to defeating it is united action from the victims.

Don’t be a victim. Don’t let the thugs win.

UPDATE: One of the complaints net neutrality advocates have made is that institutional press outlets — who would also be affected by the demise of the principle — are paying little attention to the fight over the issue. While a very few major news organizations have noticed the unfolding battle, a Google News search shows that all but a handful of stories originate with blogs and trade magazines. Among the few newspapers with a reliably national audience to mention the issue is the LA Times, which takes a fairly comprehensive look in its technology section and mentions Save The Internet, one of the sites linked in this post.

Stories like the one in the Times are important for a couple of reasons. The obvious one is that people will read the story and perhaps take some interest in the issue. The slightly less obvious one is that politicians who favor the protection racket will note net neutrality’s institutional press debut and begin to realize they can’t fly under the radar forever. That’s a good thing.

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