Net Neutrality in Danger !

Reporters Without Borders is asking Congress to take a stand in favor of Net neutrality after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the Federal Communications Commission lacks the authority under existing legal framework to prevent Internet service providers from blocking or slowing specific websites. “This is a major stepback”, the organization said “The ruling is contradictory to the government’s commitment to Net neutrality and equal access to the Internet for all American citizens. It allows Internet service providers to control Internet traffic, rerouting people to sites and search engines they own. This is not only a commercial decision, it also has enormous consequences for the free flow of information. The neutrality principle has made the Internet an open, creative and free space. It is already being put under threat by the world’s authoritarian states, led by China and Iran. It would be disastrous if the United States was to go against this key principle.” In 2007, Comcast, the largest cable company in the US, was caught interfering with consumers' ability to download files from file-sharing services like BitTorrent. The FCC opened an investigation into the matter on January 2008 and in August of that year, after concluding Comcast had violated its Internet principles,ordered the company to change its policies. Comcast appealed the ruling a month later, arguing the FCC's net-neutrality principles could not be enforced. In a unanimous decision on April 6th, 2010, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the FCC exceeded its authority when it sanctioned Comcast for deliberately preventing subscribers from using peer-to-peer file-sharing services to download large files. ”We call upon Congress to support the FCC's initial decision. New legislation is needed to give the FCC the resources to prevent Internet providers from abusing Net neutrality. We also call upon the FCC to reclassify broadband as a "telecommunications service" so that it can keep the Internet open and free”, added Reporters Without Borders. In 2002, under the Bush administration, the FCC decided to classify broadband Internet service providers in the same category as Internet applications companies like Facebook, leaving them outside of the legal framework that traditionally applied to companies that offer two-way communications services. Many countries already violate the principle of Internet neutrality by blocking access to online publications which displease them. Reporters Without Borders strongly believes the Internet must be used to transmit information to the greater public without reference to its origin or destination, and that users alone should decide what content they want to access. Abandoning the neutrality principle in the United States would increase the risk of creating a centralized network similar to the Chinese model, granting access providers improper and decisive power over content transmission