Death of the Internet

 

This might be something that means very little to you, and a lot of people claim it's the least of our worries.  Part of my job this election cycle is to manage a victory center during which we ID people based on their important issues and where they stand with who they want to elect.  Net neutrality has never come up.  Regardless, this is something that would affect you more regularly than an income tax increase, minimum wage changes, or US involvement in Iraq again.  I don't want to say the death of net neutrality outweighs any of those other problems.  All I'm saying is that it will dramatically affect you if this goes the way our cable companies want it to go.  Net neutrality is about to be

What is net neutrality?  What it means is that all of our cable and telecom companies must provide open networks to their customers.  It means that your ISP should not be allowed to block, slow down--basically discriminate against--any website, applications, or content accessed via their networks.  This all originated with your phone company back when this was a huge deal decades ago; AT&T, Comcast, and other home phone services cannot legally block numbers or decide who you can can't call, and what you can or can't say while calling.  That same principle and law should (and for now still does) apply to your ISP.

If net neutrality is murdered--and primarily in order to bring these ISPs more profit and force content providers and applications to have to pay more, or force consumers to pay more for an internet fast-lane--then the internet will die with it.  Net neutrality ensures that everyone can communicate and roam freely online.

Besides increasing costs to content providers and consumers to access that content, net neutrality also allows equal access to consumers for small businesses and innovators.  In fact, net neutrality enables people to find, access, and browse this very blog at the same speed and ability as they can with ThoughtCatalog.com, which is a huge website with hundreds of writers (something this blog will probably never become).

Internet should not become pay-to-play.  Your ISP has no right to control what you view or how quickly you can view it.  The internet as we know it today stands at risk if new neutrality is eliminated.

Starting on May 15 of this year, the FCC proposed a rules that could undermine net neutrality.  It would enable companies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon to be able to create a tiered system online; a slow lane for most people, and a fast lane for people who can afford paying fees to access content faster.  Those companies would also be able to select websites they wanted their customers to have access to, and discriminate against websites that either didn't pay enough or that they simply disliked for whatever reasons.  (A good example is how Comcast owns NBC, and they would make things their content more accessible while other networks would be significantly slower if not inaccessible.)

After a lot of people disagreed with the FCC's proposal, they left one option on the table to preserve net neutrality.  This move would reclassify the internet as a common carrier under the Communications Act (so ISPs would be held to the same standards as cellular and home phone setups).  After September 15 (so Monday of next week), the FCC is closing their comment period for us to weigh in on its proposal.

What can you do?  Share this blog post to share awareness.  And sign up.  I know a lot of people don't do this kind of stuff, but with me being in a bit of web development, running my own website, and basically using the internet every single day, this matters just as much to me as winning these races I'm working on and all the other political stuff I'm doing.  We have five days to help turn this around.  I'm sorry I got around to this so late.  Please get involved.  It only takes a few minutes to fill this out and stand with the Team Internet.  Don't be that person in 2015 who gets on their computer and smartphone and wonders why the internet is the way it is.