| Dear 5849376, Today, rather than standing up for a free and open Internet, President Obama's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed adopting rules that will kill the Internet as we know it. On a 3-2 vote, Democrats on the FCC voted to advance a proposal to end Net Neutrality. But because of a massive public backlash and intense grassroots pressure against the proposed rules, undoing Bush-era deregulation and reclassifying the Internet as a public utility is still on the table. This is the change we really need and is the only way to establish Net Neutrality regulations with teeth. As a candidate, President Obama promised to be a strong defender of Net Neutrality. With President Obama's FCC Chair leading the charge to kill the Internet, the president has a responsibility not to sit on the sidelines and watch it happen. We need President Obama to take action now and save equality on the Internet. Tell President Obama: Don't kill the Internet. Click here to automatically sign the petition. The president's newly appointed FCC Chair Tom Wheeler has put the FCC on course to allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to divide the Internet into fast lanes for wealthy corporations and slow lanes for the rest of us. If successful this would amount to nothing less than the corporate takeover of the Internet and the death of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is a principle that says that Internet users, not ISPs, should be in control. It ensures that Internet service providers can't speed up, slow down, or block web content based on its source, ownership, or destination. Net Neutrality is important because the Internet is an essential service Americans rely on to conduct our most basic daily affairs, from applying for a job to finding a home to running a small business. And our right to communicate freely and be heard lies at the heart of our ability to participate equally in our democracy. The FCC has the authority to protect all Internet users by requiring Internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon to continue to treat all web users equally. But despite claims from Chairman Wheeler and others to support a free and open Internet, the kind of discrimination allowed by the FCC's proposed rules is flatly incompatible with Net Neutrality. And the reason for this discrepancy all comes down to politics. It's obvious that the FCC is responding to the political influence wielded by the giant telecom companies who abhor Net Neutrality and have a tremendous financial incentive to kill it. President Obama can't be a strong defender of Net Neutrality, as he pledged to be, if he continues to sit on the sidelines. With this anti-Internet proposal moving through the approval process at the FCC -- and an alternative path to reclassify the Internet as a public utility -- the time is now for the president to weigh in. If he does get involved, he can stop the FCC's tremendously dangerous and misguided plan. In short, a decision to sit out this fight is a decision to kill the Internet. Tell President Obama: Don't kill the Internet. Click here to automatically sign the petition. A string of federal court cases has made it abundantly clear that the FCC has the power to enforce strong Net Neutrality rules if it goes through the process of undoing a terrible Bush-era decision to deregulate broadband instead of treating it like the vital public utility it has become. But rather than take that clear (and clearly legal) path of re-regulating broadband as a public utility (in FCC jargon, "reclassifying" broadband), the FCC is proposing sham rules that sound like regulation but in reality will afford us no protection at all. While the proposed rules are subject to change before they are finalized, it is both alarming and telling that the FCC's starting place is sham reform instead of meaningful protection for Net Neutrality. President Obama's strong support for Net Neutrality would be an incredibly effective counterweight to the small army of Big Telecom lobbyists swarming the FCC and Congress. Internet users need the president to make his position clear. A strong stand by our president, along with the active participation of the massive amounts of Americans who care about this issue and don't want to see the corporate takeover of the Internet is what is need to save the Internet as we know it. Tell President Obama: Don't kill the Internet. Click the link below to automatically sign the petition: http://act.credoaction.com/go/4339?t=6&akid=10677.3291973.EK5wPn Becky Bond, Political Director
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