Hello, internet. Enjoying your interneting session, perhaps watching this video with lots of tabs open in the background full of interesting things to check out.

The internet is amazing, and that's because of the rules which govern how it works.

An important one of which is net neutrality, treating all data equally.

But some internet providers want to ditch this rule to insert themselves betwixt you and your data as the most meddlesome middlemen in human history, to their benefit and our detriment.

How? Well, think of the internet as a series of pipes. Some are ocean and continent spanning pipes through which vast rivers of data flow.

You don't get access to those. They're very expensive and you couldn't handle it anyway.

But you do have a little pipe that connects to the big pipes through which you can pull down and send out data.

You pay your internet provider to maintain this pipe. This rule means that your little pipe cares not what flows through it.

Cat videos, discussion forums, calls or games, whatever you're doing, you're using the whole pipe to do it, and no website gets preference over another.

Everyone wants a faster internet, but that requires more metaphorical pipe in the ground, the building of which is slow and expensive.

Now, you may have heard your internet provider on the news talking about how this rule prevents them from building fast lanes for special kinds of data.

They want you to think they're expanding your access to the information super highway,

but removing this rule also gives them the power to speed bump the existing roads

and charge more to use the fast lane that was really just what you had before.

The power to preference some data over others is the power to favor one video site over another

and to limit a tiny part of the

pipe for the video you're watching right now or trying to anyway. We've been through this

before, constraining other companies in similar ways. Take electricity. You pay for a certain amount

and when it arrives in your house, you can do with it what you wish. The electricity company doesn't get to decide that rather than build more power plants,

it's going to dim your bulbs and then offer a brighter bulbs monthly subscription.

And so it should go with the internet.

Wats are watts and bits are bits and will always need more and more.

...