A movement is afoot in Washington that has many bloggers concerned. Referred to as "net neutrality," the discussion involves the most fair way to offer content to consumers: do we allow equal access to network bandwidth, or do we allow the network to be sold to the highest bidder resulting in "fast sites" that pay more money and "slow sites" that do not?

Under the latter scenario, blogs hosted by large companies would be much faster than our little old food blogs. Where's the fairness there?

Bay Area Bites is one of many food blogs participating in today's "Day without a Food Blog". For a complete list of participants, go to Participating Food Blogs on Chez Pim.

What can you do?

ACT.
CALL.
READ the links below for more information.

slate.com

Since about the 17th century, there's been a strong sense that basic transport networks should serve the public interest without discrimination.This might be because so much depends on them: They catalyze entire industries, meaning that gratuitous discrimination can have ripple effects across the nation. By this logic, so long as you think the Internet is more like a highway than a fried-chicken outlet, it should be neutral in what it carries.

Washington Post

We all want our broadband and the benefits it can bring. Let's hope our policy-makers in Washington can resist the siren song of "net neutrality" and keep government out of Internet regulation so that the future that beckons becomes a reality.

New York Times

One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access, and slower to navigate. Providers could also block access to sites they do not like.