(Also posted on the Canonical blog)
On 10th September 2014, Canonical are joining in with Internet Slowdown day to support the fight for net neutrality.
Along with Reddit, Tumblr, Boing Boing, Kickstarter and many more sites, we will be sporting banners on our main sites, www.ubuntu.com and www.canonical.com.
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Net neutrality
From Wikipedia:
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.
Internet Slowdown day
#InternetSlowdown day is in protest to the FCC’s plans to allow ISPs in America to offer “paid prioritization” of their traffic to certain companies.
If large companies were allowed to pay ISPs to prioritise their traffic, it would be much harder for competing companies to enter the market, effectively giving large corporations a greater monopoly.
I believe that internet service providers should conform to common carrier laws where the carrier is required to provide service to the general public without discrimination.
If you too support net neutrality, please consider signing the Battle for the net petition.