I want to take a moment to interrupt the usual flow and pattern of my blogs and raise awareness of an issue that is relevant to everyone reading this. We all take the open and fair Internet for granted, but the time to defend this service is now at hand. Our freedom as Internet users is at risk because of the agenda of the new FCC Chairman who wants to put more power and money in the hands of big cable companies at the expense of consumers.
Right now, new FCC Chairman and former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai has a plan to destroy net neutrality and give big cable companies immense control over what we see and do online. If they get their way, the FCC will give companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T control over what we can see and do on the Internet, with the power to slow down or block websites and charge apps and sites extra fees to reach their audiences.
If we lose net neutrality, we could soon face an Internet where some of your favorite websites are forced into a slow lane online, while deep-pocketed companies who can afford expensive new “prioritization” fees have special fast lane access to Internet users – tilting the playing field in their favor.
But on July 12th, the Internet will come together to stop them. Websites, Internet users, and online communities will stand tall in order to sound the alarm about the FCC’s attack on net neutrality.
The Battle for the Net campaign will provide tools to make it easy for your friends, family, and followers to take action. From the SOPA blackout to the Internet Slowdown, we’ve shown time and time again that we can stop censorship and corruption when the Internet comes together. Now, we have to do it again.
Internet services have basically become a public utility in the 21st century and big cable companies should not be allowed to skew the quality their services in favor of sites that can afford to pay them more. I will stand up on July 12th; I hope you will too.
You can learn more and join the action here: https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12
We will return to the regularly scheduled blogs next Wednesday with a review of one of my favorite books: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Thank you for indulging this digression; I wouldn’t have posted this if it weren’t something I care about and feel must be shared.
The images featured in this post can be found through the hyperlinks below.
Featured Image
Ajit Pai
Fight For The Future
I haven’t kept up with this issue. Thanks for the information.
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You’re welcome. Anything I can do to spread the word. This isn’t receiving a lot of coverage outside Internet based news sites and content creators but it affects us all.
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Thanks for explaining this important issue so clearly!
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Thank you for reading and understanding how important this issue is!
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It’s hard to get across to people how truly devastating losing net neutrality will be without them being personally affected by it, but it’s one of those things that once lost will be almost impossible to get back. Thanks for spreading the information!
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Thank you so much for commenting and understanding. It is difficult to actively spread the word about something like this without it feeling like spamming or pandering, so I figured one blog post on here would be sufficient without bothering people too much.
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A Commenter on my blog told me of a link that will go directly to the FCC Proceeding to determine net neutrality (FCC #17-108) that you can write to. It’s http://www.gofccyourself.com . I thought it was a joke, but I tested it and it does go to the actual FCC page where you click EXPRESS to add your comments. Thank you John Oliver !
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I saw that as well! There are a variety of ways to communicate your support of net neutrality. Thank you for taking the time to read and comment!
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Hi Erik – I was looking for an appropriate page on which to thank you for reading my blog and for following but couldn’t find one. This article caught my eye.
Much after the ‘event’ of course, but it does occur to me that we are all already potential victims of greedy power hungry corporations – Google, Yahoo, Amazon to name a few – who have the capability to take over our lives and steal them from us if we let them.
Anyway, thank you! 🙂
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I definitely agree that these corporations already have their claws in our personal information (especially those you named, some of whom took part in the event) so I suppose the main idea behind this movement is to curtail the ISP’s from limiting our internet browsing capabilities as well as play favorites with the companies that pay them more in order to drive business toward their own interests. I think that is a separate, if connected, issue but thank you for bringing it into the conversation. We definitely need to remain vigilant as consumers AND creators in order to keep from being taken advantage of. thank you for taking the time to read and comment and you’re very welcome; it’s the least I could do!
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