Why Net Neutrality is an important issue.

One of the reasons I rarely post about politics is because honestly, most of the issues today are First World Problems. Everyone has an opinion about what is important and what is not important about gay marriage and marijuana legalization, but do you really think Ethiopia or Egypt or other struggling countries care about these issues? They have more important legislation to focus on.

Net Neutrality, on the other hand, is an issue that every country cares about and effects everyone in the country. It is up there with Freedom of Speech and Human Rights. On one extreme we have China that filters all of their media via ISPs and culls mass gathering organization via ISP firewalls and keeps out other countries news in order to control the masses. The Egyptian government shut down the internet when they felt the population was organizing a revolt. The Middle East filters out and persecutes those who post anti Muslim content.

Prior to the FCC ruling we had no such restrictions on our ISPs and they could literally do whatever they wanted. The idea was that ISPs could self regulate and be reasonable and ethical all on their own without government intervention. If they wanted to filter out media from a specific political party they could, but we trusted them not to. We assumed they were ethical enough on their own to not do such things.

Then the Netflix/Comcast thing happened and everyone suddenly realized this trust was violated. Verizon jumped on the money train and CenturyLink did too and it went from one company violating trust to starting down a path no one liked (except big business).

That's when Obama petitioned the FCC to make the Net Neutrality ruling that eventually came to pass.

Since then I have heard some of the most uneducated statements about this than I have ever seen about any topic. That is why I have posted so much about this recently. I am terrified this amazing ruling that will do so much good for our country will be overturned.

The FCC is not governing websites. They are not doing anything with websites. They are governing ISPs. They are essentially saying they cannot block or throttle sites just because they do not like them or because their product competes with something ISP does.

This issue is not party specific. Even though it was Obama that petitioned the FCC to make this ruling, it should not be associated solely with the Democratic party. Absolutely no one stands to gain from being anti-Net Neutrality except for big business ISPs who can (and do) blackmail websites out of their profits.

Even if you don't like the bill being passed right now, for crying out loud, do not be anti-Net Neutrality. It is on the same level as being anti-Freedom of Speech. Even if you want something different passed, that's fine, but do not stop Net Neutrality legislation! The big business ISPs have failed to be ethical and the government SHOULD intervene now because they have violated our trust and will continue to do so with no regrets!