Net Neutrality is being Repealed.

[PhantomUnderYourDesk]

Today has been the day, the day where things would be decided.... Not by me, but by the Members of the European Parliament. The decision whether negotiations with the next instance concerning controversial Article 13 can be launched. Things got serious and reached their climax, naturally among the first things to do as I've been home again was checking the news with anticipation - how did things end...?



I'll make it short and outright spill the beans:

We won! The European Parliament voted to reject the plans!!

Well, it's a suprisingly close vote, 318 Members voted against further negotiations while 278 Members wanted to progress things, 31 Members were undisclosed and prefered to not give their vote. Not much of a big gap, yes... But what's important is the result; the outcome that there won't be any soft-forced filters for internet user of the EU, the meme culture can take a breath and websites like wikipedia and tumblr won't pretty likely become inacessable. The internet remains neutral and a place where freedom of speech is practicipated and you decide what you see and upload.

....For now, that is. In September, the topic will likely come up again as at that time things will be discussed once more, but until then there's enough time for groups of representatives to rework and ease things concerning the hoped reform.

The petition I shared.....it didn't reach one million signatures by the time it ended, but in total exactly 878.375 people signed and added their small part to save the internet that we know. According to the hosts of the website, that's the highest number of signatures a campaign started on the site has ever reached. ^^


Things have gone well, thank you for your time and maybe contribution to this fight, now we have reason to be relieved and rejoice!~ I'm handing out free chocolate cookies and oreos only today for a limited time.

Sources of information:
- Webpage of a local political magazine for the news and numbers
- change.org for anything concerning the petition