This very moment our friends at EFF, Mozilla Foundation, AVG, Netflix, Tumblr, ACLU and thousands of other people and businesses around the world are fighting a historic struggle to ensure that net neutrality is preserved for generations to come.

What is net neutrality, and why should you care?

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, without discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, or application.

Unfortunately, several large Internet carriers and their lobbyists in the American Government are wanting to destroy this principle. They want to see a world in which users would have to pay hefty fees to access the content that they love. They want to see a world in which competition and innovation is stifled, because start-ups cannot afford to pay for their content to be carried at the same speeds as their bigger rivals. Essentially, they want to create a world in which companies and users must pay a bribe to access the content they want to see.

How does this affect you, if you’re not American?

As you will appreciate, many of the platforms that you love — Facebook, Netflix, Tumblr etc. — are incorporated, and hosted, in the U.S.A. This means that before content reaches you, wherever you are in the world, it must first make its way from a U.S. data centre before leaving the country. It is at this point that a lack of net neutrality would strike, slowing that traffic down, and ultimately ruining the Internet for everybody.

How can you help?

Easily. Head over to Battle For The Net to sign up to the petition, spread the word on social media, and add content to your website to help raise awareness.

This is a vital cause, and one that we must all immerse ourselves in. The future of the Internet is at stake.

Thanks for helping,