Senator Al Franken is well-focused on the current threat to net neutrality: [1]
If we learned that the government was planning to limit our First Amendment rights, we’d be outraged. Well our rights are under attack – not from the government but from corporations seeking to control the flow of information online.
I believe that net neutrality, preserving a free and open Internet, is the First Amendment issue of our time.
Today, a small Minnesota bookstore’s website loads just as fast as Amazon.com. That’s because right now Internet service providers don’t discriminate between different kinds of content online. So if you have something to say or a product to sell, there is currently no limit to how influential or successful you can be.
But the nation’s largest telephone, Internet, and media companies have a different plan for the Internet. Instead of a level playing field, these companies have made clear they plan to reserve express lanes for their own content and services – or those of big corporations that can afford to pay a higher price – and leave Minnesota’s consumers and small businesses in the slow lane.
We can’t let companies write the rules that they’re supposed to follow. Because if that happens those rules are only going to protect corporations, not the public interest.
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