Chennai, Bangalore protest over net neutrality

Chennai/Bengaluru: Workers of Free Software Foundation Tamil Nadu (FSFT) on Thursday protested for the cause of net neutrality at Edward Elliot's Beach in Chennai.

With the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) deadline on taking responses for the issue coming to an end on April 24, the protesters wanted to create awareness about net neutrality among average internet users.

"Right now, in India the concept of net neutrality which means treating every data and service on the internet equally, is in the process of getting violated. Most of the average internet users are not aware about what net neutrality is. So, our programme is all about bringing this online issue to an offline platform," said Prasanna Venkatesh, the convenor of FSFT.

Protesters carried banners with slogans like 'biggies v/s start-ups', 'I wonder what the end of net neutrality means for us', 'TRAI to treat all bits equal'. They also addressed the public about what net neutrality is and what big corporates aim to achieve by it.

Meanwhile, in Bengaluru, Free Software Movement Karnataka (FSMK) carried out a protest to in favour of net neutrality, calling it a 'public utility'.

"We are gathered here in support of net neutrality and our primary demand is, we want the TRAI to pass a law to ensure that net neutrality is protected. Our understanding is that the internet is a public utility and not a private property. Companies need to ensure that this remains so," said Vikram Vincent, the general secretary of FSMK.

"Apart from the printing press, the internet has been the next best disruptive technology and unlike the television and the print medium, the ordinary person has had the opportunity to reach out to each other, so we would like the internet to be democratic and allow for innovation," he added.

Vincent further added that if net neutrality is broken, the creativity and innovation people are using to collaborate with each other and build something new would get destroyed.

People were seen carrying banners with slogans like 'internet is my birth right and I should have it', 'my internet my choice'.

The TRAI has already received 1 million e-mails in favour of net neutrality .