Do you enjoy the incredible variety of information and entertainment that comes to you in seconds whenever you’re online? Well get ready to be disappointed.

After years of insisting that it would not, the Federal Communications Commission, is raising the white flag on the Open Internet. The commission’s chairman. Tom Wheeler (above) has proposed new regulations that would let Internet service providers like Verizon and Time Warner Cable create fast-lanes for some online content providers and slow down other traffic.

The proposed rules are a dream come true for telecom industry lobbyists, who see content providers as a cash cow just waiting to be milked. They’ve been pressuring the FCC for years to make these changes. If they get their way now, websites you turn to every day for news, to connect with friends and family, and share ideas with other advocates many not work very well any more.

Deep pocketed tech firms can probably scrounge up the money to pay off these broadband gatekeepers. But what about alternative voices, non profit advocates and small businesses? They’re headed for second-class citizenship online.

This proposal would represent “the transformation of the Internet where the 1 percent get the fast lanes, and the 99 percent get the slow lanes,”former FCC Chairman Michael Copps said this morning in an interview on Democracy Now.

But it doesn’t have to happen. With you help, we can turn the FCC away from this disastrous proposal. Please sign Common Cause’s petition to stop the draft rules and preserve the Open Internet.