Net neutrality is nothing new if you are a geek. We want the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) of the Internet to be nothing more than a “dumb pipe”. What that means is we don’t want the ISPs to be able to control what we are able to access, how fast we can access what we paid for, and they should offer the service at a reasonable price. John Wilbanks in the above video says that net neutrality means it is our “rights as an Internet user and we should have a right as an Internet user to have access to a neutral architecture that lets us innovate with no more restrictions than fulfilling the technical protocols.”
I am against the Internet Freedom Act and that might surprise you if you are not familiar with what the act actually stands for. I mean I give credit for naming the act something that people would oppose just by the name of it. Who would want to vote against Internet Freedom right? Well John McCain, the man who almost won the presidency has introduced legislation that would prohibit the FCC from regulating the Internet. Yes, the man who doesn’t even know how to use the Internet (see the video clip below) has introduced legislation about your Internet experience. Not to mention he has received more campaign dollars than any other politician from telecommunications companies (hmm coincidence he is introducing this legislation to help empower telcos…?)
What he is essentially proposing is broadband providers could limit the traffic to certain sites and protocols if it so desired. For instance many of you probably use Skype to talk to your friends and loved ones online. Well media companies and ISPs don’t like Skype because it allows you to have something for free which they would love to charge you for. What some ISPs have done and are still doing today is throttling your connection and even dropping packets so your Skype call or bittorrent connection is terminated sporadically. See here for more information on how Cox (in Canada) and Comcast in the US have throttled network connections.
Oh and yes Obama is for net neutrality. If you love the Internet and you want innovation of technology, we must stop this legislation.