Trust.Zone Joins the Battle: Save Net Neutrality!

Today is the Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality, where thousands of companies including Trust.Zone are taking a stand to support the current state of the internet.

The Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality is a effort to defend the idea that internet access should be equal and accessible for all. Biggest websites like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, a lot of companies and users are coming together to fight The Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) plan to reverse Title II, the legal framework that forbids internet providers like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast from favoring or discriminating against any online content, apps, or services.

Net neutrality is a principle about fairness on the Internet. It holds that no ISP should be able to unfairly manipulate your Internet usage or your experience of the Web, particularly in ways that harm other businesses.

Some large Internet Service Providers say that they support net neutrality, but that they just want the FCC to go enforce it under a different legal provision, or have Congress pass a specific net neutrality law. But this is just a trick - they already know that if the FCC goes back to classifying broadband as an information service, its net neutrality rules will fail. ISPs also know that Congress isn’t likely to pass a real net neutrality statute anytime soon, if ever, given the millions that telecom giants have invested in making sure they get to write any regulation of their industry.

Here is a simple metaphor from John Bergmayer, senior counsel at Public Knowledge

 The telephone system, which has long been regulated to protect the public interest. You probably wouldn’t like it if you tried to order pizza from your favorite local place and were connected to a Papa John’s instead because it had got some special deal. Or if a Verizon telephone only connected to other Verizon phones.

Obviously, there are a lot of differences between internet access and the telephone and how they work and how they are built, but the basic principle that essential communication systems ought to be non-discriminatory is the same.