What is Net Neutrality and why is it important?

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Just recently the brazilian president Dilmar Rousseff called in her speech at the United Nations General Assembly for multilateral mechanisms for the world wide network that are capable of ensuring principles such as neutrality of the network. This demand is no coincidence because Net Neutrality is a fundamental principle of the internet as we know it today. But it has been under attack regularly. In 2008 Neil Berkett, CEO of Virgin Media, called the principle of Net Neutrality "a load of bollocks" [1] and thus sparked a heated debate on the abolition of Net Neutrality by internet providers. In Germany this debate peaked recently during the so called "Drosselkom"-affair, when Deutsche Telekom announced plans to throttle internet traffic and cap flat rates in favour of their own content delivery service. On the other hand the Netherlands and Slovenia already established laws on Net Neutrality, which other international providers do not really like [2]. The discussion on Net Neutrality continues currently at the EU level where commissioner Neelie Kroes proposed a draft [3] for an EU directive that allegedly protects Net Neutrality, while in fact abolishes it [4].

The internet is used by many people who benifit from it every day. However most of these people do not have insight into the underlying principles of it. For them it is difficult assess the consequences of political decisions on Net Neutrality. Therefore we decided to explain this complex topic "Net Neutrality" and the related economic and political aspects with simple illustrations and every day analogies. At the same time we want to promote the principle of Net Neutrality and offer an opposing view to the PR machinery of the internet providers [5].

Since the internet does not know state borders it was important for us to address an international audience in their respective languages. Net Neutrality has been an issue for Anonymous for a long time [6]. Thus it came natural to us to involve as many international cells as possible in the production and especially the translation of this project. As part of the production we've talked to various organisations and initiatives that are already actively campaigning for Net Neutrality [7]. Since Anonymous has no fixed organisational structure we recommend the viewers of the video to support one or more of these groups, who provide a frame work for activism in Europe and world wide.

• Net Neutrality guarantees free access to all content, services and applications of the internet. 
• We request statutory regulations for net neutrality.
• We demand equal treatment of data! 
• We reject preferential treatment of premium data in exchange for a worse treatment of your personal data!
• We oppose internet censorship, and manipulation of our internet traffic.
• Nobody has the right to be the snooping in our traffic. Nothing justifies it. 
• We wish for a free and open communication network, in which we together as community benefit from!
• Real net, now and in future!