by daveesl77 » Wed Nov 22, 2017 7:55 am
If you, your family, your friends use the internet, then you need to understand this! On December 14, the 5 member FCC regulatory committee will be voting to eliminate Net Neutrality. FCC Chairman Pai has started the process and the measure is expected to pass, 3 votes to 2. Doesn't matter which political party you agree with, the FCC destroying Net Neutrality will hurt you, hurt free speech and hurt democracy. Loss of it ONLY helps the Internet Service Providers and large companies. Contact your members of Congress and let them know that they MUST stop the FCC from overturning the Net Neutrality regulations. Why?
Why does this matter? Net Neutrality essentially says that the internet is a utility and is thus a basic structure of society. It says that internet providers must treat everyone the same. Take this example, if Net Neutrality were gone, the parent company of CNN gives huge sums of money to Verizon, Comcast, Brighthouse, Time-Warner, ATT. For that payment they get not only a really fast internet access and delivery but they also demand that the providers slow down and restrict access to Fox News. Or the other way around. Without Net Neutrality, that is perfectly legal and allowed. ISPs can limit access to any information or data. They could legally decide to not stream the NY Times or Breitbart or whatever.
Disney is starting their own streaming service and will be removing all Disney company products from services like Netflix, that is a done deal and is ok. But, without Net Neutrality, Disney could then, legally, take over the high speed side and force providers to put Netflix to the lower side. Who has more money? Disney.
Let's say you want to start an online shop that sells used car parts. Presently, you and everyone else has the exact same access to the internet. Strip away Net Neutrality and suddenly eBay and a few other big sites, because they have deep pockets, get the expensive, high speed delivery and you end up with something like dial-up delivery. Your potential customers aren't going to wait around for 10 minutes for a page to load, they'll go to someone else. Someone with more money and a faster website.
This isn't yelling "the sky if falling", this is reality. Getting rid of Net Neutrality does nothing to help the individual and only helps to line the pockets of the internet service providers, helps bigger outfits to harm smaller ones and can absolutely dramatically reduce your lines of information. We have less than 3 weeks to force Congress to stop the FCC.
dave