New rules changes at the FCC could potentially spell trouble for your small business.
NOTE – This podcast was originally scheduled as the first release of 2018; when the US AG rescinded the Cole Memo, we swapped the first episode with the second and did not re-record this episode, so it will refer to itself as the first episode of 2018
If you’re not up to speed on the new, or more specifically, the rollback, of the net neutrality protections that were put into place by Tom Wheeler, former chair of the FCC, then you’re definitely going to want to listen in to this weeks podcast episode update –
[LISTEN: Net Neutrality & The Future of American Web Content – PODCAST EPISODE]
Hazel and Kim are talking net neutrality, how it’s potentially going to affect your small or medium – heck, even large – sized business, and what you might be able to do about it.
In a nutshell, the protections that were put in place by the last chair of the FCC have been undone in December by the new chair of the FCC. Ajit Pai is a former attorney for Verizon, and it appears that he still favors his corporate buddies over the good of the American people, and perhaps even equal access to content hosted on American web servers.
What do you mean, the future of American web content could be impacted?
At the end of the day, net neutrality is not about how much your Netflix is going to cost, or whether you can get your Hulu to play at normal speed, it’s going to be about controlling the flow of information, and at a very basic level, censorship in America.
[READ: Me & John Oliver Are Out to Save Net Neutrality – BLOG ARTICLE]
The internet started out as a US government project, designed for the defense department (as most everything seems to be) to create a communications network that could be used by the military and the government.
Then the internet became the commercialized enterprise that we know and love today – the one that gives us our free news, our free weather, and lots of those cat videos.
What? My free cat videos are going to disappear?
Yes, it’s certainly possible that you’re going to have to pay for those, or the site that’s hosting them is going to have to pay more for you to be able to see them. It could even be a double dip on the part of the ISPs and both you and the site could be forced to pay extra. Complete tragedy, eh?
Can I just pay in Bitcoin to see the cat videos?
That’s not very likely either, since all this crypto currency computing takes up a massive amount of resources and it’s also possible that ISPs could decide to charge people who are going gangbusters with crypto mining, crypto wallet sites, or crypto exchange sites more money too.
Make it stop! I want my free cat videos!
Ok, so here’s what you need to do – listen to the podcast, make up your mind about just how important the internet is to you, and decide to either take action or don’t be a complainer.
Just in case you missed the podcast episode link above, here it is again, just tap here and go —