Net Neutrality: Why It's Important and How We Might Lose It

If you have been following the news in recent months, you may have heard the term, "Net Neutrality" and you may have wondered what this term meant.  The official definition is "the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differently by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication.”¹  That definition might not be the clearest for everyone, so at its most basic, it is simply that the people who provide your internet cannot censor, filter, artificially slow, or charge extra for anything on the internet based on based on the site,  the user, or any other reason.  “Well, why is this important,” you might ask.  Net neutrality is one of the most important functions of the Internet as it allows for free and open communication without the meddling of a third party.  It also allows for technological advancement and healthy competition between businesses.  ISPs are not able to filter content they don’t agree with or artificially slow content they may not want to provide.  All content must be provided equally.

“That sounds great,” you might say, “why would that be in danger?”  Well my friend, because the major cable providers want to make more money.  AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast are four major telecom companies lobbying the government to do away with the principle of Net Neutrality.  These companies have actually spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last several years on lobbying against Net Neutrality, with AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast spending a combined $66 million in 2012.² Verizon actually sued the FCC in order to challenge the government organization’s ability to enforce Net Neutrality rules and unfortunately for Net Neutrality, Verizon won.  All of these lawsuits and lobbying are leading to exactly what the cable companies want, the creation of internet “fast lanes.”  These so called “fast lanes” would allegedly allow for users or sites to pay ISPs extra for faster service while those that did not pay would be forced to use a much slower connection.

I’m sure you can see the inherent problems with this idea.  First, customers would have to pay a premium to their ISPs, on top of their already high prices, for “faster” internet.  An even uglier prospect is the idea of paying a la carte for sites or having sites “packaged” like cable channels as shown by these hypothetical images. 

Second, companies would have to pay ISPs to have their sites provided quickly instead of at an unusable crawl.  I’m sure those of you with some background in economics would then see that companies would start charging more for their products and services to cover the costs of paying for their sites to be in the fast lane.  Effectively hitting the consumer with a double whammy of price increases.  These fast-lanes would also crush start-ups.  Small companies with a great new idea but not much cash would never be able to afford to have their site in the “fast lane” and their idea would quickly die.  Without Net Neutrality we would never have things like Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Amazon, or any of the other wonderful sites we use the Internet for every day.

As you can see the death of Net Neutrality would be terrible for consumers and the economy.  “But what can I do?  How can I fight against these billion dollar telecom corporations?”  The first thing you can do is visit https://www.battleforthenet.com/.  There they will help you connect with your state’s elected representatives and you can let them know you support Net Neutrality.  You can find more information about what is happening at the FCC here: http://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now.

Let’s keep the Internet free and open for everyone!

Logging off…

Matt  

1Tim Wu (2003). "Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination". Journal on telecom and high tech law. Retrieved 15 Sept 2014.

2Drutman, Lee, and Zander Furnas. "These Companies Spend the Most Money to Kill Net Neutrality." The Daily Dot. N.p., 5 Sept. 2014. Web. 15 Sept. 2014.

Images taken from Google Images