28142
Nintendo 3DS Legend
Towns Folk
What is Net Neutrality?
What is happening?
As many of you hopefully know, the US congress is trying to abolish Net Neutrality. This will mean that it gives ISPs free reign to give people access to "fast paths" for a fee among other things. ISPs can also then choose content to show to people, effectively censoring what they want.
To those who are living outside of the US, you might be thinking why this involves you and why should you care? Well, if the US ends up passing this then the UK has a very high chance to follow along. If both the US and UK do it, then it will most likely turn into a snowball effect where other countries will follow along.
This also affects website owners, since they will have no control over if ISPs block their site, limit speeds to their sites ect. So for example, if you wanted to access youtube, you might have to pay $50 to access your ISPs "entertainment pack" or pay additional fees so you can actually buffer a video in decent time, instead of waiting for 20 mins for a 144p quality video to load 10 seconds of the video.
What can you do to help?
If you're in the US:
You can help by contacting your senator and/or representative and telling them your stance on this issue. You can call them, email them, do whatever you can to contact them and make them aware.
Links will be at the bottom of this post where you can go and find out who you need to contact in your area and how to do so.
If you're living outside of the US:
Well unfortunately you cannot help by contacting senators and such, but you can do something as equally important. You can help spread the word. If you're a YouTuber, make a video on the issue providing links and explaining the issue. If you're on any social media, share and comment on posts about this issue.
Otherwise, just keep posting about this issue, keep talking about it. This goes for everyone, both people inside the US and outside.
One major issue currently is that people do not know the extent of this. Some people are uneducated on this issue, and we need to help educate those people. For example, this was a YouTube comment I found not too long ago about this:
Now no, this wasn't a joke post, they where simply just not educated about this and thought that they where not affected by it. This is one of the things that needs to change. People need to know about this.
Links:
https://www.battleforthenet.com/ - Explains what I've said in this post, gives a lot more detail into things. Has videos, more reading to do on this matter. Has a way to call congress easily.
(My thought on this: Don't use the script this site gives you, since imo if congress get about 1,000 calls all saying the exact same things, that wouldn't give as much weight in the matter as 1,000 calls all giving their own views on this matter. Just spend an extra 5 mins on writing your own script to use, or just list some points for you to say as those 5 extra mins could make a huge difference.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7ek4q6/join_the_battle_for_net_neutrality_net_neutrality/ - This contains more links on where to go and what to do.
https://democracy.io/#!/ This is a neat little tool someone made where it makes it very easy to write to your representatives.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42065649 - BBC news post on this recent development.
If I have missed out anything then please say what I have so I can add it to this. Hopefully this has given more information to everyone and spread a bit more awareness about it.
TL;DR
Wikipedia said:Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments regulating most of the Internet must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.
What is happening?
As many of you hopefully know, the US congress is trying to abolish Net Neutrality. This will mean that it gives ISPs free reign to give people access to "fast paths" for a fee among other things. ISPs can also then choose content to show to people, effectively censoring what they want.
To those who are living outside of the US, you might be thinking why this involves you and why should you care? Well, if the US ends up passing this then the UK has a very high chance to follow along. If both the US and UK do it, then it will most likely turn into a snowball effect where other countries will follow along.
This also affects website owners, since they will have no control over if ISPs block their site, limit speeds to their sites ect. So for example, if you wanted to access youtube, you might have to pay $50 to access your ISPs "entertainment pack" or pay additional fees so you can actually buffer a video in decent time, instead of waiting for 20 mins for a 144p quality video to load 10 seconds of the video.
What can you do to help?
If you're in the US:
You can help by contacting your senator and/or representative and telling them your stance on this issue. You can call them, email them, do whatever you can to contact them and make them aware.
Links will be at the bottom of this post where you can go and find out who you need to contact in your area and how to do so.
If you're living outside of the US:
Well unfortunately you cannot help by contacting senators and such, but you can do something as equally important. You can help spread the word. If you're a YouTuber, make a video on the issue providing links and explaining the issue. If you're on any social media, share and comment on posts about this issue.
Otherwise, just keep posting about this issue, keep talking about it. This goes for everyone, both people inside the US and outside.
One major issue currently is that people do not know the extent of this. Some people are uneducated on this issue, and we need to help educate those people. For example, this was a YouTube comment I found not too long ago about this:
Links:
https://www.battleforthenet.com/ - Explains what I've said in this post, gives a lot more detail into things. Has videos, more reading to do on this matter. Has a way to call congress easily.
(My thought on this: Don't use the script this site gives you, since imo if congress get about 1,000 calls all saying the exact same things, that wouldn't give as much weight in the matter as 1,000 calls all giving their own views on this matter. Just spend an extra 5 mins on writing your own script to use, or just list some points for you to say as those 5 extra mins could make a huge difference.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7ek4q6/join_the_battle_for_net_neutrality_net_neutrality/ - This contains more links on where to go and what to do.
https://democracy.io/#!/ This is a neat little tool someone made where it makes it very easy to write to your representatives.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42065649 - BBC news post on this recent development.
If I have missed out anything then please say what I have so I can add it to this. Hopefully this has given more information to everyone and spread a bit more awareness about it.
TL;DR