Net Neutrality is a battle we must win or face Digital darkness for decades or ever. Europe votes this week – YOU must tell your MEPs to vote. Here’s what I wrote using writetothem.org. It took me 10 minutes. (I didn’t have to look up the names of the MEPs or type them in – the site does all of that)
Dear Andrew Duff, David Campbell Bannerman, Geoffrey Van Orden, Vicky Ford, Richard Howitt, Stuart Agnew and Robert Sturdy,
Dear MEPs,
I’m writing to ask you to vote for “Net Neutrality” in the forthcoming Commission’s Telecoms Package proposal. I am a member of OpenForum Europe – a body who for many years has campaigned for clarity and Openness in IT issues in Europe. Recently we wrote to you with our arguments (copied on my blog).
/pmr/2014/03/31/write-to-your-meps-to-vote-to-safeguard-open-internet-in-europe/
I am an academic, and proud to be in Cambridge and the Eastern region which is one of the top innovation areas of the world. A free and open internet allows UK ideas and people to thrive. It was Tim Berners-Lee who created the idea of the World Wide Web on which so much has happened. It creates new businesses, new ideas, new science, challenges orthodoxy and even lets me write to you!
From our letter:
Brazil is successfully pushing its own ‘net neutrality’ law through the legislative process and it is a question of time when other countries will follow.
“The moment you let neutrality go, you lose the web as it is. You lose something essential – the fact that any innovator can dream up an idea and set up a website at some place and let it just take off from word of mouth”, said Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.
Please take the time and interest to consider what is at stake. There is still a possibility to correct this shortcoming and introduce a text that truly safeguards the net neutrality in the EU.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Murray-Rust
Now go lout and do it. Tomorrow is too late.