Do you have ANY idea how long that animated “loader cat” GIF above would take to load if the broadband monopolies had their way? Neither do I, but I bet it would be weeks. That’s part of the problem with the Net Neutrality issue, very few people really seem to understand it. And those who do seem to be living in an isolated world of supernerds who don’t know how to communicate.
In spite of having over a year to roll it out, one of the best-organized protests against the demise of net neutrality did a TERRIBLE job of generating buzz about today’s protest. I say this because this issue of telecom monopolies has been a hot-button topic for me for several years now, and I only heard about today, in spite of being a daily consumer of over a dozen aggregator sites like Reddit and PopURLs.
Some other problems this kind of protest will face include the fact that it’s “protesting the opposite of something neutral”, to put it in plain English. Not only is the language a bit technical, but Battle for the Internet is taking a position against something that doesn’t really exist yet, i.e.: the complete lack of an open internet. Which makes it easy for an organization like the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation to take jabs at them, saying in press releases that they are “disturbed by yet another scare tactic by techno-ideological advocates, pointing to the imaginary boogie man of “slow lanes,” in their effort to push for utility-style regulation of the Internet.”
But don’t be fooled. The ITIF is the same organization that supports the idea of a Comcast-Time-Warner merger.
So what should you do if you loathe the idea of your crappy, overpriced internet service getting even crappier and more overpriced? It’s fairly simple, really. Get informed first, and speak up when it matters. We just talked the other day about why one city in America has internet that’s 50 times faster than everywhere else; it’s mainly because they didn’t let telecom monopolies stop them!
The videos below offer entertaining primers to what is otherwise a slightly mind-numbing topic.
And the FCC is still accepting opinions on the topic until September 15, 2014.
