Access to free, uncensored, and private communications is a human right. In the 21st century, that means the Internet. And today, that means “net neutrality,” or the basic idea that, in exchange for their near-total monopolies, cable and telcom companies have to let all individuals and businesses have equal access to their services.
Cable companies have tried every trick in the book to portray net neutrality as a bad thing—as though they have a right to choose who I can communicate with! We all know that there would be a public outrage if say, AT&T hung up calls made by subscribers trying to switch to Comcast, or “de-prioritized” their traffic, introducing a 5-second lag in the conversation. So why can my ISP discriminate, or “re-prioritize,” my Internet traffic because of who I’m communicating with or the content of that communication? And the lie that this is a “first-world problem,” a “luxury,” is disproved by the very fact that the federal bureaucracy used the Internet to fulfill its public comment requirements on this very proposal.
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If both those providers choose to discriminate against a site I visit, I have no options left. As a consumer, that’s a major inconvenience and a lost freedom. If I were an online business owner, that would be a lost income. How again is this a more free