Saturday, January 25, 2014

We Need Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality has been put into light recently in the US because a federal appeals court's decision of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate that internet service providers have to treat all internet traffic equality and now there is fear that ISPs (Internet Service Provider) will do because of this ruling. Net Neutrality should be regulated because it helps keep the internet an open platform for information and content to spread.

Net Neutrality is the concept that all data transferred through the internet should be treated the same by governments and ISPs. ISPs may not charge higher prices for different content, sites, applications, etc. 

Net Neutrality should be required by law, if not then ISPs will have incredible control on what content their costumers receive on the internet. ISPs could have some content providers pay more or make special deals and in return users would find their content first in search results and put this content providers on a higher tier. Content providers not with this program would be put lower on the ISPs' list of importance and would receive less traffic. This means small business would have a harder time competing with bigger business who have the money to pay for the special deals. No Net Neutrality would also impact up and coming sites and content makers. It would be difficult for a new website to gain traction and continue on if bigger sites get the traffic diverted to them first. Content makers would safe the same problem as well, as their content would be put on the back burner if a big production house made a deal with an ISP. News could also be impacted by this. For example FOX, CNN, ABC, NBC, you name it could make a deal with an ISP and in return their sites would be the fasted to load and the first to show up in searches. That site would become the primary source of news and information for the users of the ISP and it would be hard for independent bloggers and journalist to compete with. 

As it is now ISPs charges the customer one monthly fee for access to all of the content they want on the internet, and the only thing they can change is how fast your internet speed is. But with out Net Neutrality ISPs would be able to charge you based on how much of the internet you use, what sites you go to or both if the wanted to. They could make it so that you would have to pay five extra dollars a month to access Face Book or You Tube because the site on their end uses more bandwidth, or if you go over some set amount of data per month they could charge you extra or by the megabyte. Watching movies on Netflex, videos on You Tube, updating your status on Face Book and talking to your friends over Skype, would cost you more and more, because the ISPs would be free to charge you more for the access to these services.

No Net Neutrality would also allow ISPs to play favoritism. The ISP is able to determine what service is more important the other and could speed up or slow down the transfer of data depending on what site the user is trying to reach. For example what if you had Time Warner as an ISP and you wanted to go watch the latest cat video on You Tube, but it took ages to load, but when you went to visit Time Warner's video sharing site, the site and the video loaded instantly. ISPs would be able to force more users to their preferred sites.

Lastly being against Net Neutrality goes against the basic ideals of the internet, the freedom of the flow of information and content. The internet is a place meant for people to share and connect with each other and that will be hindered if ISPs are not kept in check with Net Neutrality. Beginners and small business would have difficulties competing with those who have a bigger budget and ISPs could play the odds in their favor. Net Neutrality should be regulated in order to insure a open internet for all that use it.



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