(Early Wednesday Morning Edition)
I’d like you to take a moment and think of your favorite websites. Are they, by any chance, mtv.com or cnn.com or maybe michellemalkin.com? No? Well you may want to consider them as your favorites, cuz soon you may not have much of a choice. Or you could take a moment, educate yourself about net neutrality, and start making some phone calls, writing some letters, and signing a petition.
If you aren’t familiar with Net Neutrality and the threat against it, check out Save the Internet. Here’s the jist of it. Net Neutrality is basically the First Amendment of the Internet. It states that every site is given equal access. Basically, you are able to search for and look at a small site just as easily as a big corporate one. That’s what the internet is all about, right? Not if the big telecommunications companies and their enormous team of lobbying attorneys has anything to do with it. AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and Comcast are spending millions of dollars to create a tiered internet where money determines how fast your site load or if it loads at all. The bill to destroy Net Neutrality is being considered by the Senate right now.
You can think of the internet as one big public access channel, but these telecommunications companies are hoping to turn it into something more like cable tv. Instead of being able to choose from millions of websites, you’ll have to choose from your internet provider’s menu. And those that don’t pay to be on the menu, won’t be accessible.
So if you like reading this website, it is of the utmost importance that you take action to save it and the millions like it. This is not something we can forget about. The telecommunications lobby is one of the strongest in the U.S. and has a long hystory of victories against what’s best for the public. But we can stand up against them and win. So take a moment and call your senator, sign the petition, write a letter to your local paper, and do whatever else you can to ensure an open internet.
