Photo Courtesy of Backbone Campaign- via Flickr

In June, I published an article titled “Under Siege: Digital Rights in the Trump Era.” In that piece, I outlined the threat that the Trump administration poses to digital privacy and net neutrality. At the time, I encouraged everyone to participate in the July 12th day of action, submit comments to the FCC, and call their congressperson. A lot has happened since then, and considering the fact that the FCC could call an official vote on net neutrality as early as next month, it is time to revisit this important issue.

I will briefly cover the concept of net neutrality, just in case anyone needs a refresher. Basically, net neutrality states that “all traffic is equal online.” That means that Internet Service Providers (ISPs, i.e. Comcast and Verizon) cannot charge a “speed” fee to businesses as a form of selective speed throttling. For example, under net neutrality, if a startup offering streaming video content wants to enter the digital marketplace, consumers will experiences the same speeds on the startup’s website that they experience on Netflix or Hulu. Without net neutrality, Giant corporations like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon could pay to have their websites load faster for consumers, leaving their small competitors in the dust. If you can’t pay the ransom, you can’t compete with those who can. This would stifle competition and allow monopolies to more easily take hold.

Let’s recap some of the major events that took place over the last few months in the fight for net neutrality. The July 12th day of action saw millions of people submit new pro-net neutrality comments to the FCC. In addition, many of the tech giants come together to voice support for net neutrality, including Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix.

In a deceptive move, AT&T created “pro-net neutrality” comment templates for users to fill out and submit to the FCC — the only problem? The templates encouraged the FCC to remove the very regulatory classification that allows net neutrality to exist in the first place. In August, the FCC officially closed comment submissions on net neutrality. This sets us up for the upcoming vote on the policy, which Pai introduced on Tuesday, Nov. 21st.

On October 2nd, despite major pushback, Ajit Pai was confirmed by the Senate to remain as FCC chair. A former Verizon lawyer, Pai has been an opponent of net neutrality from the beginning.

Despite the fact that Ajit Pai has been confirmed, and the FCC’s comment form is now closed, all hope is not lost. Congress still has the power to stop the vote (or even better, to make net neutrality law). You can visit https://www.battleforthenet.com/ and enter your phone number — they will automatically route you to your congressional representatives. Alternatively, you can call 202–224–3121 and enter your zip code. Call, and then have your friends and family call. Join the December 7th ‘Verizon Protest’ to send a message to the FCC and Ajit Pai that we want to keep our internet free and open. This is not a fight that we can win easily — but I believe it is a fight we can win.

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