Today the FCC is voting to remove rules for Internet Neutrality that were adopted February 26, 2015. Removing these rules would allow the few Internet Service Providers (ISP) to manipulate your Internet traffic as they see fit. Comcast was found to be throttling BitTorrent traffic in 2011 and did not stop until the current rules were adopted. I applauded these new rules in this blog in 2015. Now the FCC wants to remove these rules and allow ISPs to treat us however they want with few alternatives for consumers.
Imagine if the government removed all the NFL rules and football games were played with no rules. How would you know the score? There would be no penalties and fans could jump on the the field (what’s a field) and run away with the ball (we don’t need a ball). Crazy, right! To let ISP make the rules and not tell anyone (both Comcast and CenturyLink did this with data download limits) will make consumers confused, frustrated and angry with no where to turn for help.
The FCC is suppose to help U.S. citizens, not delivery us to corporations for their profit. Comcast and CenturyLink did not invent the Internet, the U.S. government did with citizen funding, so we invented it, we want rules to protect the Internet’s democratization and our use of it. If the current administration cannot work for us, we need to find a way to do it ourselves.
It maybe to late to comment on the action, but give it a try at the FCC web site.