Save the Internet: 6 Days Left (5 if you read this in the morning)

So most of my posts are about random tech stuff, but here's a little politics to fit in. "Net neutrality" means that telecommunications companies share traffic equally across the network. That's the way things work now, and it's legally enforced that way. The alternative, that the Bush administration and most telcos are fairly behind, is to deregulate and allow individual companies to offer whatever content they want and charge more for full access.

Yup, under some existing proposals, you'd have to pay more to access our blog, if you could at all. It has all sorts of other content, privacy, and communications issues related to it. In a completely deregulated world companies could choose to allow, slow down, or speed up access to whatever sites they wanted. Think of it as somewhere between China and CompuServe.

Some of that's extremist, but what's fairly likely is that if you subscribed through AT&T and they supported the Yahoo empire, you would have a tough time accessing the Google empire, including Blogger.

Fortunately, the FCC is conducting an inquiry into how citizens feel about this, but it closes on the 16th. If you want to read more, check out this article or this FAQ. If you want an easy way to contact the FCC, here's a form letter and a petition.