While they tend to be fairly quiet around these parts, Portland has been home to Mozilla employees — and more recently, a Mozilla office — for years. So even if they weren’t in a court battle to protect one of the very most basic tenets of the Internet as we know it, I’d still be looking for ways to write about them. But lucky for us, that’s exactly what they’re doing.
What are they fighting for, exactly? Net Neutrality. Okaaaaaay. What’s that?
Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers should treat all data equally and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, or method of communication.[4] When net neutrality is required, Internet service providers may not intentionally block, slow down, or charge money for specific online content.
Yes, we’ve been hearing about this for awhile. And most of us probably thought the battle was long over. But it’s not. In fact, as Portland resident Klint Finley asserts in Wired, today could be the day.
The suit raises two main questions: whether the FCC broke the law by failing to consider evidence that went against its allegedly foregone conclusion that it should overturn the Obama-era rules, and whether it was legal for the FCC to stop considering broadband internet a telecommunications service, like telephone calls, and instead consider it an “information service” like Google or Facebook.
Here’s hoping that Mozilla prevails. The Internet will be better for it. (And yes. I still capitalize “Internet.” So sue me. Oh wait. Probably not the best language to use in this context.)
