At the annual conference, VSTE Board Chair Keith Reeves voiced VSTE's strong support for Net Neutrality, the concept behind what is often called the open Internet. This concept means that all lawful content and providers should be afforded the same level of access. Governments, internet service providers and others would not be allowed to discriminate by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication by providing more robust access to particular companies or applications. Many people consider net neutrality to be a fundamental piece of the Internet architecture.
On Thursday, December 14, 2017, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) will vote to roll back rules related to Net Neutrality. In 2014, VSTE issued a statement related to these rules when they were under consideration. You can read that statement here.
Now, Net Neutrality is back in the news, and the vote on Thursday will likely undermine those rules, allowing Internet Service Providers to provide preferential treatment to content providers. VSTE is adding its voice to organizations from the American Library Association to CoSN asking the FCC to vote no on these rules. There is no public comment available but VSTE members and friends are encouraged to contact their federal legislators to ask them to pressure the FCC to delay or cancel the vote. Use the Who's My Legislator site to determine your Congressional representatives.
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