Industry & Advocacy News
July 12, 2017
If you’ve been following the battle for net neutrality—the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally—you will have heard that it’s under attack by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC’s new Chairman, Ajit Pai, has a plan to dismantle an Obama-era order that preserved net neutrality by reclassifying broadband Internet as a public utility—as opposed to an information service—thus allowing the FCC to regulate it.
But there’s still a chance to preserve net neutrality. On July 12, the Authors Guild will join more than 70,000 websites, organizations, and individual Internet users in a “Battle for the Net” campaign to sound the alarm about the FCC’s attack on net neutrality. It’s important for individuals to weigh in because the FCC has opened a 90-day period for public comment (closing at the end of August) before it drafts a new net neutrality order and votes on it. Your opposition can let Congress and the FCC know that net neutrality has enormous support and they don’t want to get caught on the wrong side of this issue. You can register your support and submit a comment here: https://www.battleforthenet.com.
A rollback of net neutrality will give Internet providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T control over what we can see and do on the Internet; they’ll have the power to slow down or block websites and charge apps and sites extra fees to reach an audience. If we lose net neutrality, we could soon face an Internet where smaller companies and individuals are forced into slow lanes online, while deep-pocketed companies who can afford expensive new prioritization fees have special access to Internet users—tilting the playing field in their favor. Because this issue is about nothing less than the preservation of individual voices on the Internet, Senator Al Franken has called it “the First Amendment issue of our time.”
Learn more here: https://www.battleforthenet.com.
