Pornhub is about to show the world the real impact of net neutrality by hitting internet users where it hurts: their porn consumption habit. The company joins Amazon, Reddit, Mozilla and others in the ‘Battle for the Net’ protest set to take place on July 12.
While Pornhub remains non-commital on what exactly it’ll do during the protest, CEO Corey Price told Motherboard it could implement a loading icon that shows the slowdown users would face if broadband companies implemented internet fast lanes. Price said:
No one in the porn industry ever yells ‘slower, slower, slower. We’re much more accustomed to ‘faster, faster, faster.’ Here at Pornhub, we want to keep it that way.
Should Pornhub proceed with the loading icon idea, expect a lot of pissed off internet users. But suck it up, it’s for the greater good, and it’s far better than the alternative.
Current FCC chief Ajit Pai and conservative lawmakers are dead-set on rolling back Obama administration protections that regulate the internet as a utility. Should these protections be stripped, it becomes a free-for-all that leaves telecom companies like Comcast and Verizon to decide what’s fair. And many predict this will come with internet fast lanes set to give preferential treatment to telecom-owned sites — like Hulu, a service partially owned by Comcast. Current rules prevent companies from giving preferential treatment to any site, let alone theirs.
The protest — organized by Fight for the Future, freepress, and Demand Progress — takes place five days before the first deadline for comments on the FCCs proposal to kill net neutrality protections.
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