Save the Internet

Phone and cable lobbyists have flooded the FCC with fiction about Net Neutrality. They continue to recycle old rhetoric that Free Press and others have repeatedly debunked.

What is Net Neutrality? Net Neutrality is the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet.

Net Neutrality means that Internet service providers may not discriminate between different kinds of content and applications online. (Ever had Comcast block your P2P ports because they don’t like what you’re sharing?) It guarantees a level playing field for all Web sites and Internet technologies.

Net Neutrality is the reason the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation and free speech online. It protects the consumer’s right to use any equipment, content, application or service without interference from the network provider. With Net Neutrality, the network’s only job is to move data — not to choose which data to privilege with higher quality service.

Net Neutrality has been part of the Internet since its inception. Pioneers like Vint Cerf and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, always intended the Internet to be a neutral network. And non-discrimination provisions like Net Neutrality have governed the nation’s communications networks since the 1920s.

But as a consequence of a 2005 decision by the Federal Communications Commission, Net Neutrality — the foundation of the free and open Internet — was put in jeopardy. Now, cable and phone company lobbyists are pushing to block legislation that would reinstate Net Neutrality.

Writing Net Neutrality into law would preserve the freedoms we currently enjoy on the Internet. For all their talk about “deregulation,” the cable and phone giants don’t want real competition. They want special rules written in their favor.

Before the FCC decided to pursue Net Neutrality protections, Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck warned his audience that the government was “trying to take over the media.” Beck later said that Net Neutrality would “wildly affect your life and free speech” by forcing a “Marxist utopia” on the Internet.

Show the FCC that you don’t buy these bogus claims — and why they shouldn’t either. Act now.