On January 14, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that struck down the Federal Communications Commission's open internet rules, commonly known as "Net Neutrality"

In simple terms, Net Neutrality is dead.

Following this, I urge you all to sign this petition. You do not have to be a US citizen to sign this petition, it will only take a few moments of your time and it is near anonymous.

Why should you sign this?

1. No more net neutrality means ISPs can now discriminate against content they dislike.

Spoiler

Everyone gets their Internet from an Internet service provider — an ISP like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast or Time Warner Cable. Under net neutrality rules, these ISPs have to treat all content you access over the Internet “roughly the same way" — they can’t speed up traffic from websites they like or delay competitor’s traffic.

Now, with net neutrality gone, ISPs can discriminate, favoring their business partners while delaying or blocking websites they don’t like. Think your cable CEO hates free online porn? Now you’ll know for sure!

2. No more net neutrality means ISPs can now force websites to PAY for faster content delivery.

Spoiler

You know how some sites you go to just load slower than others? Usually, that’s just because the slower site is image heavy, poorly coded, or dealing with intense server load. But with net neutrality gone, ISPs can now start charging hefty fees to websites that want quick content delivery — shifting the long load times to poorer sites that can’t pay up.

Prefer indie retailers to Amazon.com? You may be in for a frustrating future.

3. Destroying net neutrality is bad for small businesses.

Spoiler

Put together items one and two and it becomes clear — negating net neutrality is bad for small businesses. If ISPs force website owners pay for faster load times, tiny retailers and personal websites will be the ones to suffer from slower content delivery.

Alternately — or additionally — ISPs will have no reason not to favor partner sites: Time Warner Cable, for instance, might favor the website of CNN (owned by the Time Warner Corporation) over the websites of competing cable news networks MSNBC and Fox News. Still, it’s the indies again that will lose out here. While Time Warner Cable might favor CNN and Comcast MSNBC, independent news networks almost certainly won’t get special treatment from any ISPs. Expand this out to music sites, web publishing, etc., and you begin to see the problem.

In extreme cases, ISPs may hinder or block content that isn’t produced by partners —much like AT&T did when it owned the telephone networks back in the day.

4. Without net neutrality, entire types of online traffic (like Netflix) may be in jeopardy.

Spoiler

Netflix watchers and BitTorrent users might want to beware — soon your beloved services may not work like they used to. Now that net neutrality’s down for the count, ISPs can discriminate against entire types of traffic: For instance, an ISP could slow or block all peer-to-peer file sharing, or all online video streaming.

Think it sounds unbelievably stupid for an ISP to stifle a certain traffic types indiscriminately? Comcast has seen reason to stifle both streaming video and peer-to-peer in the past.

From an ISP’s perspective, discriminating against some traffic types makes business sense: Many ISPs are also cable television providers, which means the “cord-cutting" enabled by peer-to-peer and streaming online video isn’t good for their bottom line.

5. Without net neutrality, your ISPs can make even more money without actually improving the Internet.

Spoiler

Right now, America’s broadband is slow. It’s slow because ISPs can already make gobs of money by charging the rich a ton for high-quality Internet while leaving the rest of America with subpar (or no) service.

Now, with net neutrality gone, ISPs will be able to make even more money off their existing customer base. They won’t need to improve service or bring broadband to rural areas because they’ll be able to keep growing (financially, at least) by charging content providers more for faster delivery and charging customers more for faster access. In all likelihood, Tuesday’s ruling means the problems with America’s Internet will be magnified.

source (I wrote virtually none of the above): http://ofpotterandwho.tumblr.com/post/73440064311/ other links scattered throughout

Right now, ISPs and other massive corporations have the power to dictate how the internet works. This almost certainly will result in censorship similar to SOPA and PIPA (which everybody cared about, for some reason) however by signing the petition you encourage the US government to restore Net Neutrality and internet freedom. The petition is here and provided you are above the age of 13 you can (and I urge you to) sign it from anywhere in the world. 100,000 signatures are required and the number is increasing excruciatingly slowly.

The petition: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/pet...riers/5CWS1M4P  

it's because the website requires you to sign in, else it'd prob have 200k easily

edit-signed lel  

pretty much lmao

signing up doesn't take long, you just need a full name and email address.

pretty much lmao

signing up doesn't take long, you just need a full name and email address.  

Signed, the government does this stuff every freaking year and it always it ends in failure so why do they keep trying when they know their going to lose.  

For voice, AlphaOmegaSin's video.  

I had some serious troubles making an account, first off, it said I already registered my account with my email address and is asking for a password accept it never gave me a place to make a password  

Password is sent to your email address.  

I believe in free enterprise, but discrimination of internet websites is pretty bad news for everyone.  

Posted by Unknown

I believe in free enterprise, but discrimination of internet websites is pretty bad news for everyone.

Free enterprise? If every ISP does the same garbage you don't have a choice...nothing 'free' about it other than their freedom to be assholes. If people had alternative ISPs to choose from it wouldn't be as big of a deal as it currently is.  

Posted by Crono

Free enterprise? If every ISP does the same garbage you don't have a choice...nothing 'free' about it other than their freedom to be assholes. If people had alternative ISPs to choose from it wouldn't be as big of a deal as it currently is.

Well the beautiful thing about free enterprise is that companies can do what they want within the limits and restrictions of the industry.

ISP's compete with each other, due to free enterprise, and the results of this competition is lower prices or better benefits of your purchase. So the market I would think would prevent any ISP from doing this.

The first ISP that does, their customers may do a mass exodus to another provider that doesn't (initially) and would make doing these things impossible for any mid-level ISP to do. I don't think all the ISP providers will have a meeting and go into it together, they are competitors so I doubt that many of them will try anything like this. I am sure some will, it seems very profitable, but it's unrealistic that they all do this. So I guess we will have to wait.  

Posted by Unknown

Well the beautiful thing about free enterprise is that companies can do what they want within the limits and restrictions of the industry.

ISP's compete with each other, due to free enterprise, and the results of this competition is lower prices or better benefits of your purchase. So the market I would think would prevent any ISP from doing this.

The first ISP that does, their customers may do a mass exodus to another provider that doesn't (initially) and would make doing these things impossible for any mid-level ISP to do. I don't think all the ISP providers will have a meeting and go into it together, they are competitors so I doubt that many of them will try anything like this. I am sure some will, it seems very profitable, but it's unrealistic that they all do this. So I guess we will have to wait.

Except the ISPs are the ones that own the lines.  

Posted by Crono

Free enterprise? If every ISP does the same garbage you don't have a choice...nothing 'free' about it other than their freedom to be assholes. If people had alternative ISPs to choose from it wouldn't be as big of a deal as it currently is.

Exactly, like, if some comcast CEO played graal and raged because he kept losing in spar, so he decided graal is stupid and made the entire server get really bad connection for comcast users.  

I never knew World War 3 would take place on the Internet!
The government VS. the citizens!  

Rebel on government!
Ready your Zone Blasters, BAR's, Gold Bows, and ****ty Classical Arrows!
WE GONNA WEEN DIS WAR GRAALIANS!
WE GONNA WEEN.  

Posted by Dusty

Except the ISPs are the ones that own the lines.

True, but I think the competition between several ISP companies will drive some of them to stay like they are. It would gain them more customers if they did, and could probably get away with charging a little more. However not as much as the other discriminating ISPs.