Two Years Ago, We Got Organized And Beat SOPA. Now, We Need To Do It Again To Preserve Net Neutrality.

The January 18, 2012 blackouts were critical in raising widespread awareness and action against SOPA. If we're going to successfully fight the FCC's new "fast lane" rules and preserve Net Neutrality, we're going to need to be able to form that kind of highly visible coalition again.

Free Press is organizing May 15 protests in D.C., to coincide with Tom Wheeler's scheduled release of the rule-change proposal. That seems like an opportune date for prominent sites to black out to draw attention to the cause (or at the very least, replace their logos with links to the Free Press site for their users to take action).

So don't stop at contacting your Senators and Representatives and the FCC demanding that broadband be reclassified as a telecommunications service under Title II. Scan the list of participants in the 01-18-12 SOPA strike toward the bottom of this page for sites you frequent, and contact their admins imploring them to black out again on May 15 for Net Neutrality. If you can think of anyone else who's pro-open web who has a highly visible online platform, please contact them as well.

We know Google, Reddit, and the Wikimedia Foundation are all pro-Net Neutrality. If we can push any one of them to replicate what they did to fight SOPA, we can generate millions of petition signatures, as well as calls and emails to Congress and the FCC. Even contacting the writer of your favorite webcomic or high-profile blog has the potential to make a huge difference.

We can stop the internet as we know it from slipping away from us. We can force the federal government to keep it open and competitive. We just need to grow our coalition to get there.