http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40575882
An estimated 80,000 websites and services are to join a protest against the FCC's plans to roll back Obama's laws on net neutrality on Wednesday.
The FCC (controlled by Republicans) want to give priority to certain groups, while major sites and services (including Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Pornhub and - to some people's surprise - AT&T) believe this would be a retrograde step plunging the internet into a dark era of global disparity.
I really don't see how anyone can be against the basic principle that the net should be the same for everyone. That ISPs argue that it stifles innovation and investment, but if the last twenty, thirty years have shown us anything, it's that that argument is bollocks, because net neutrality has existed since the internet was born and clearly people have invested and innovated.
All it does stifle is the ability to make more money, and the ability to charge people who want their sites to be serviced faster a higher rate than people who don't care. And the ability for the rich corporations to get faster service speeds than the poor (which is a very Republican thing to want to do, from what I understand).
I am all for this protest, and I hope it works in the way the anti-anti-piracy laws protest worked. (Which apparently it did).
More so because the FCC is a regulatory body for one country and yet if they get their way, they will affect the entire world with their decisions, which seems a tad unfair to the rest of us.
But maybe someone else has a different opinion. Should companies be able to pay to get priority speed and service and traffic rights on the internet? Should net neutrality become a thing of the past, and money rule above all else?
