Hello fellow Otaku. It's been a little bit since I've posted up something else during my "normal" schedule, but considering what I've watched (And the information within what I've watched), I'm going for it.
It's very evident that the Internet is one of the most powerful forces on the planet. Hell, it's practically vital in this country! The Internet manages businesses, provides information both positive & negative, gives access to an ungodly variety of services, and allows little blogs like this to stick around so people can see it. In recent years, it has come under attack from the government in horrible ways. SOPA and CISPA are just two of the most popular, recent, & brutal (Not the good, heavy metal kind of brutal) ways that they have tried to bring the Internet under it's bloated and corrupted thumb. While they have been defeated due to some old-fashioned activism, there is a much darker threat on the horizon. A threat that makes SOPA and CISPA look like little specks of dust floating in the light.
Once of the most important things protecting your rights on the Internet is something known as Net Neutrality. To put it simply, Net Neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet
equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user,
content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and
modes of communication*. This basically allows your access to the Internet to be unaffected by influences from the various companies, who want to dictate what kind of information you can view, and/or how much of it you can view. Recently, there's been a ruling against the FCC's net neutrality rules, and it reads as follows:
"Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a
manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers, the
Communications Act expressly prohibits the Commission from nonetheless
regulating them as such. Because the Commission has failed to establish
that the anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules do not impose per
se common carrier obligations, we vacate those portions of the Open
Internet Order."
This is quite possibly one of the most terrifying things to recently happen in politics. With this ruling, this will allow the various providers to dictate what you can view, and how long you can view things. This is the kind of ruling that destroys the right of the people, and gives the companies unfettered control over something that should be controlled by everyone. This is a threat to internet rights/freedom in the United States, and rights/freedom in general. I don't really like to get political (The last time I did was back in 2012 before the election that year), but under the circumstances, I'm making an exception. Please, do everything in your power to spread the word about this travesty. Right below are a couple links that will help in this task, including one in where I found the ruling result.
http://gizmodo.com/federal-court-invalidates-net-neutrality-rules-sides-w-1501028467?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
http://act.freepress.net/sign/internet_FCC_court_decision2/
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/restore-net-neutrality-directing-fcc-classify-internet-providers-common-carriers/5CWS1M4P
http://www.savetheinternet.com/sti-home
http://www.fcc.gov/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEZihk3MWE8
Please gentlemen Otaku & lady Otaku, spread the word! We can't let the Internet become controlled by those who see nothing but dollar signs. Before I conclude this post, I want to leave a music video here for you. The moment I heard about this ruling, it immediately came into my head. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWKfXxwmYpQ
See you all next week. Until then, stay Otaku!
*
Taken from Wikipedia's Net Neutrality page.
No comments:
Post a Comment