If you have no problem reaching this blog, it’s because a long hard fight
was won in the name of net neutrality. Under Donald Trump’s new chair of the FCC, net
neutrality – the right of all web presence to be accessed equally, with privacy protections and regardless
of ads/no ads, paying/not paying fees escalating with bought and paid for speed – is in serious danger.
Instead of this blog, you could be getting “This site not
available, try later” or “Unable to access, try later.” “Use html version.” Under the new “tax refunds for 2% vs.
health care for everyone” administration, proposed rule changes will allow Comcast, Time
Warner, AT&T and others to charge fast lane fees, slowing traffic to this
blog and millions like it to a slimy snail’s crawl. All to
allow bigger, paying customers to hog the web.
If it seems an insignificant change, consider this: the mom
and pop t-shirt shop I use for A and Copy Sin shirts will lose enough site traffic
to conceivably put a family and the student designers they employ working for Walmart. Those specialty sites you use for
whatever? The portfolio site you’re
building? You’re smart enough to be
reading this. You figure it out.
I shop Amazon, but what is it really? A clearing house for small businesses paying to be included. Squeeze out the
little guy and if you want to read this blog, I’ll be paying someone - an aggregator like Amazon or a Comcast – so you
can find the blog and read it for free.
I might be forced to accept ads, school and agency sponsorships.
Implying endorsements I am very careful to avoid.
Even more worser, you may need a paid subscription to read information I now share freely.
When you go to work for an agency, you'll not only be using your creativity for readership, awareness, commerce, click through. You'll also work on accounts in the slow lane and you'll have to figure ways to beat it. If you don't that client - and your job - may not recover.
Know the ancient arcade game, Frogger? Trying to cross lanes of fast moving traffic
without going splat?
Without net neutrality, we’re all Frogged.
July 12th is Net Neutrality Action Day. Net
neutrality and privacy advocates will be drowning officials with demands for free access and privacy. Put your words in gear, call or write your Congressperson. Senators. The FCC. Google net
neutrality, you’ll have a million options of petitions, phone connections,
letter forms, protests.
The web’s your world, not mine.
Own it. Fight for it. Create the free world you want to live in.
This post, along with everything else on this blog, (c)2017 or earlier, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative
