juliepsamuels

The answer to maintaining a democratized and thriving Internet does not lay in legislation, but rather in fostering innovative new business models that allow content creators to get paid and consumers to have easy and efficient access to content. We’ve seen time and again that those consumers are willing to pay, but at a price point that makes sense for them – this is Economics 101. We’ve also seen innovative new business models that we find really exciting, such as Humble Indie Bundle, which you can read about here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/developers-and-fans-benefit-humble-indie-bundle. Put simply, we believe the United States does not need any new legislation to protect creators, but those who threaten the Internet need to realize that – even if disruptive business models threaten the old way of doing business – squelching new business models does a disservice to those who create and provide content.

We're optimistic that we will see real reform to the broken patent system in the next few years. Policymakers in D.C. and across the country have shown an appetite to take up the matter, probably in no small part because of the amazing work that the tech community did defeating SOPA and PIPA. But, to be sure, we have a long road ahead of us. You can join our work on this issue at defendinnovation.org.

Mike's exactly right. Think about cable -- a la carte options, where you have to pay for access to certain stations. That's what we're talking about. You'd order one package from your ISP with some websites, but would have the option to pay more for access to more and different websites. And, even worse, this would make it nearly impossible for the next great website or next great technology to get to users, especially if that website or technology comes from a small, scrappy startup (and don't they usually?). They'd have to pay the so-called "tolls" to the ISPs just to get the access to users that all the big companies would already have. This is not the Internet we want.

We also have a broad coalition of people fighting for real net neutrality. It's internet users, startups, larger companies, gamers, creators, you name it. It's a huge movement. Which is why we can win.

JZ's sad Internet world might end up as our reality if we don't have real net neutrality!