We NEED Net Neutrality!
The FCC is taking comments on their Official Inquiry on Net Neutrality. Please take a few minutes to use the form linked and tell the FCC why Net Neutrality is important to you.
This is what I just sent as a comment. Feel free to paraphrase me or quote me:
The FCC is entrusted with protecting the country’s precious PUBLIC property– our bandwidth. So far I, for one, am not all that impressed with the job you’ve done. Reclassifying the internet as an information service has the potential to eventually turn it into nothing but Bud TV and the Home Shopping Network, with all the good and useful information and services, alternative news services, and the innovative and unique content and one of a kind products sidelined to the slow load pipe. This has to be the one single most damaging action the FCC could have taken, which has the potential to kill the infant internet in the US, ensuring that we stay way behind much of the rest of the world in broadband buildout, and trashing our already floundering economy. This move by the FCC has the potential to put me and many of my clients out of business– I build websites for small businesses, non-profit organizations and entrepreneurs, none of whom have the deep pockets to pay vig to Ed Whitacre’s successor. Why have you created a situation where a few fatcat corporations can hold the internet hostage??? You are supposed to act in the Public’s interest. Killing Net Neutrality is not in the Public Interest.
Only by ensuring the internet’s Common Carrier status will the FCC be encouraging the internet to continue to flourish the way it has over the last ten or so years while Net Neutrality was in place. I cannot understand why you, the FCC, “fixed” something that wasn’t broken! Without Net Neutrality we wouldn’t have Google, or Ebay, or Amazon, or Wikipedia, or Craig’sList or any of hundreds of other internet startups which have flourished because of the existence of Net Neutrality. We wouldn’t have MotherJones News, HuffingtonPost, ArsTechnica, YouTube, or Yahoo! Instead we’d have more “reality TV” shows (which are anything but) and Infomercials, a few corporate sites (sorry, I prefer Apollo Pizza to Pizza Hut!) not to mention Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton instead of REAL news.
Without Net Neutrality we won’t have effective government and corporate oversight such as now exists with websites like the Sunlight Foundation and FollowTheMoney, the lightning reactions of the Blogosphere to getting out news that Big Media won’t cover (like the FCC spectrum auction, for one!) and organizations like Common Cause and FreePress, which report the stories Big Media won’t.
The internet is the only truly democratic voice. Taking away Net Neutrality permanently will have the affect of silencing that voice. Does the FCC really want to kill Democracy?
Net Neutrality is essential to free speech, equal opportunity and economic innovation in America. Since the FCC removed this basic protection in 2005, the top executives of phone and cable companies have stated their intention to become the Internet’s gatekeepers and to discriminate against Web sites that don’t pay their added tolls.
This fundamental change would end the open Internet as we know it. It would damage my ability to connect with others, share information and participate in our 21st century democracy and economy. The FCC must ensure that broadband providers do not block, interfere with or discriminate against any lawful Internet traffic based on its ownership, source or destination.
Technorati Tags: Net Neutrality, FCC, Telecommunications, Cable, Broadband, Wifi, Big Media
05/31/07, 8:34 PM |
With price controls, bandwidth is limited. Without competition, content is controlled. No, net neutrality will hurt what it is intended to protect. Ron Paul was right to vote against this.
You are right connecting with others and sharing information are important. So is the freedom to trade worldwide. Only then can we interact in a 21st century democracy, a democracy based on freedom.
05/31/07, 8:49 PM |
Dar, the internet would NOT be the success it is today if Net Neutrality hadn’t been in place. And so called Market Forces within the telecomm industry are nonexistent since they’ve always been regulatory whores who scream for regulation when it benefits them and against them when it doesn’t. Every country which has successful broadband deployment shares ONE regulation which we lack, but which was in place when the internet was born– Local Loop Unbundling. The Telecomms fought against it and won, and now there IS NO COMPETITION. And now they want us to give them billions more to build the network we already gave them billions to build? As I’ve said elsewhere, it’s time for US citizens, taxpayers and the US politicians to stop bending over for the Telecomms. We NEED net neutrality.