We're all equal on the Internet. Unless AT&T gets their way.

13 Mar 2014 • cms.fightforthefuture.org

From Fight for the Future's e-mail campaign:

Just yesterday, we learned that AT&T will be rolling out a new program that allows companies that can afford it to pay for their users’ mobile data usage (1). Kinda sounds great, huh? If you’re using YouTube on your phone, Google will pick up the bill for the data usage so you don’t go over your limit.

Here’s the problem: this policy, and others like it, are sneaky methods of undermining net neutrality -- and they quite literally threaten the Internet as we know it (2).

This simple explanation of the benefits companies could offer really worries me.  I think this type of "sponsorship" will indeed sound great to most users.  Look at how many users use free apps, free services... they either don't know or don't care what they give up in return (their privacy, their eyeballs, etc.)

The average user today cares about free (as in beer), not freedom (as in speech).  This doesn't bode well for net-neutrality.  Freedom as an abstract concept seems harder and harder to even explain to the public at large (yes, I'm touching on a much broader context here).