Professor Van Ry

If you work in the digital humanities–or for that matter, in higher education–net neutrality is an issue that calls for a concerted response from all of us now. if you’re still getting caught up, check out Adeline’s post on this from last week, Alexis Madrigal’s guide to the history of Net Neutrality, and Colorlines on why people of color need to care about this.

Net Neutrality is the principle that all Internet content should be treated equally. Current proposed changes by the FCC would allow Internet Service Providers like Comcast to charge content providers(say, Netflix or the DPLA) a premium for access to the fastest service. Why does this matter? Think about how quickly you lose interest if a website takes longer than usual to load. The New York Times reported that people will visit a website less often if it is slower than a close competitor by more than 250 milliseconds (a thousandth of a second).

There is some argument in the press over whether the FCC has actually changed course since Verizon v. FCC limited its power to prevent broadband providers from blocking or discriminating content or services (the FCC Chairman claims it hasn’t). <Read more.>

Via Adeline Koh and Siobhan Senier, The Chronicle of Higher Education.