We like getting letters.
The latest missive in our inbox comes from the White House, in response to our letter to the President, thanking him for supporting net neutrality as one of the most important media matters in history.
If you’re not familiar with net neutrality, then do read on. Here’s what it’s about, according to the President of the United States, as explained in his letter to FMC CEO Jaci Clement:
More than any other invention in our time, the Internet has unlocked possibilities we could barely imagine a generation ago. A big reason for its growth and innovation is the fact that most Internet providers have treated traffic equally. This principle, net neutrality, allows an entrepreneur’s fledgling company to have the same chance to succeed as established corporations, and a high school student’s blog to not be unfairly slowed down to make way for advertisers with more money.
I strongly believe in net neutrality because there should be no gatekeepers deciding which sites people can access, and no toll roads blocking the entrance to the information superhighway. The Internet was created and organized around the basic principles of openness, fairness, and freedom. We cannot allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas. That is why I asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to implement the strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality — and in February, the FCC voted in favor of a strong net neutrality rule to keep the Internet open and free.
The simple, commonsense rules I asked for reflect the Internet we all use every day, and some ISPs already observe them. They are rules to protect access to lawful websites and services; to keep Internet speeds consistent no matter the content; to increase the transparency between consumers, ISPs, and the rest of the Internet; and to explicitly ban paid prioritization or other restrictions that put services in a “slow lane” because they don’t pay a fee. And these rules should be applied to mobile broadband. To learn more, you can visit www.WhiteHouse.gov/NetNeutrality.
These rules mean everything for preserving the Internet’s openness. If carefully designed, they shouldn’t create any undue burdens for ISPs, and there can be clear, monitored exceptions for reasonable network management and for specialized services — such as the critical networks serving a hospital.
The Internet has been one of the greatest gifts our economy–and our society–has ever known, and the FCC was chartered to promote competition, innovation, and investment in our networks. In service of that mission, there is no higher calling than protecting an open, accessible, and free Internet. We must preserve this technology’s promise and its democratic spirit for today and for future generations.
Sincerely,
Barack Obama