In light of the roundly disliked FCC net neutrality ruling today, Apple co-founder and Gizmodo hero Steve Wozniak has written an open letter to the regulatory group. His message: let us decide what to do with our own damn internet.
Woz's epistle appeared today over at The Atlantic, and lays out a heartfelt, well-reasoned case for an open internet:
The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away. Please, I beg you, open your senses to the will of the people to keep the Internet as free as possible. Local ISP's should provide connection to the Internet but then it should be treated as though you own those wires and can choose what to do with them when and how you want to, as long as you don't destruct them. I don't want to feel that whichever content supplier had the best government connections or paid the most money determined what I can watch and for how much. This is the monopolistic approach and not representative of a truly free market in the case of today's Internet.
There's more—much more—drawing comparisons to Apple, the Federal highway system, and more. But the root message is: net neutrality is important and good and big and crucial. We need to keep it that way. [The Atlantic]