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*I just tried this on the GD forum, where everyone accused me of copying and pasting this piece I just spent over an hour typing. I don't know who else writes about Gaia and net neutrality, but if you accuse me of plagiarism, I defy you to prove it*



The Internet providers are lobbying congress to allow them to give worse service to those who do not want to pay extra. Verison, Comcast, AT&T, and other Internet Providers, all of whom had nothing to do with the creation of the internet, are putting down a lot of money to get America's congressmen to go along with this. In addition to giving you a crap version of today's Internet if you don't want to pay extra, they could choose to not allow you access to certain websites.

(For anyone who would make a deal out of it, I copied the following 3 real-world examples)[/size=9]
In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.
In 2005, Canada's telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a labor dispute.
In April, Time Warner's AOL blocked all emails that mentioned www.dearaol.com — an advocacy campaign opposing the company's pay-to-send e-mail scheme.

Net neutrality, the first amendment of the Internet, is why Internet providers are not allowed to block your service or threaten you with crappy Internet. Some bills were attempted that would make net neutrality permanent, but the huge Internet providers fought fiercely and greased a lot of palms and the bills were not passed.

Imagine a future with out net neutrality. Small internet blogs will take forever to load, allowing the corporate media to take over internet news, the last place to find news that wasn't beholden to their sponsors. Each Internet provider will give you access to things they own and deny access to things their competitors own. If Gaia Online is not able to pay for faster service, than going to Gaia will be inconvenient. Websites like Ebay, Wikipedia, YouTube, Gaia, Amazon, Google, and all other great websites that started out small would never have been able to take off. This will stifle innovation, and only the already established will be able to thrive.

One day you may have children or know some children in the future and they may ask you things such as what it was like before 9/11? What was it like when it became the year 2000? What was the Internet like when it was new? Back when there was net neutrality. Back when you could go to any website, anytime, and everywebsite loaded just as fast. Back when the small were on a level playing field with the large, and great new websites would rise on that playing field.
They might ask you "why didn't you do anything about it when they were trying to change the internet?" You might wish you could go back in time and do something about it.your self back in 2006, writing to your state representatives, spreading the word to everyone, posting fliers around your neighborhood telephone polls, and waking up the people of your community to the impending doom about to befall their internet. You might imagine a fictional past were your congressmen and congresswomen, going into the 2006 election year were made aware that no one would vote for them if they abolished net neutrality, and the internet as you knew it being saved.

If you like the internet as it exists, than go to this link: http://action.freepress.net/campaign/savethenet
For the love of the internet, do something.