http://internetyouneed.com/
Watch it.
[quote:233jtkdv]
"Net Neutrality" sounds technical, robotic, and over all our heads. But what it translates into affects us all. Net Neutrality really means "Internet Freedom". The freedom for you to put up what you want when you want to and have it seen equally by everyone in the world. It means what you put up has as much chance of being seen as something created by a major corporation. It's innovation from the ground up in the truest sense. It's the American Way.
This is how most of the biggest success stories on the Internet started. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and even Google all started as simple websites that anyone could browse to as easily as their competitors at the time. In some cases these garage projects were able to topple established competition. One day they may be toppled by something even more advanced, useful, and innovative by someone working out of their garage. It could be you.
But if Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have their way, new services would have a lot harder time getting started. ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, and Time-Warner have their own internet services like search, news, streaming video, and Internet phone that they want you to use. If they can control what information can run get to their customers and what can't then they can force you to use their services while blocking others. That stifles competition innovation before it can even start. That's not the way we American's work.
Net Neutrality is Patriotism
We invent it, we produce it, and then we sell it on an open market. That's the method of innovation American's have been using for centuries. It's up to our customers to decide what works and what fails. The Internet makes that process easier than ever. It's the basis of that "New Economy" you're always hearing so much about: the Internet economy that, even in these hard times, makes the American economy the strongest in the world right now.
Without Net Neutrality it will be established businesses that determine what you can produce and market. Your work can only reach the world with their approval and on their terms. It sounds like something that could happen in North Korea, but it's happening here in the USA.
Comcast didn't invent the Internet. The Internet was created with tax payer dollars. ISPs have been given the ability to make money serving it to us. We pay them handsomely for that access and ISPs made more this year than any other. If Verizon or Time Warner can freely make money from the Internet then we should be able to as well.
Net Neutrality is Not Censorship
A recent Rasmussen poll showed that most people believe Net Neutrality will lead to the kind of censorship of the Internet we currently see on network television. Nothing could be further from the truth. Net Neutrality seeks to keep the Internet exactly as free as it is today.
Right now the most egregious censorship is committed by content providers. So called "walled gardens" like Apple's App Store frequently censor content based on arbitrary and confusing rules. Apple has refused entrance of mainstream magazines, dictionaries, and even Pultzer winning editorialists for not complying with their content rules or by allowing access to "undesirable" web sites.
Net Neutrality is Bipartisan
Whether it's the Tea Party or the Green Party, grassroots political movements exist because they have as much chance of reaching people on the Internet as the Big Two. And even the Democrats and the Republicans need the little guy and his blog, or the soccer mom and her forum to spread their ideas. If new sites have trouble popping up then so do their ideas. And what happens if your political or religious ideals break with the values of your service provider? They can make things even harder for you. Simply because we don't know if our speech will be the one to get the cut, we have to fight to protect all speech. Net Neutrality does just that.
[just wanted to share. it doesnt affect me directly as i live in central europe but... you know. The thing stars in one place and then more ISP's and countries leech the idea]