The Argument over Net Neutrality

Recently something called Net Neutrality has been a popular topic, where head of the FCC AjitPai seeks to repeal Net Neutrality. Net neutrality isn’t a hard concept:

“Net neutrality, or open Internet, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) shouldgive consumers access to all legal content and applications on an equal basis, without favoringsome sources or blocking others”

It is something we have apparently had for decades unofficially and unnamed such as with thetelegram, according to some sources; yet with the current technology, the concept was made lawsome years prior, during the time of the Obama administration. Those laws were made with theintention to stop alleged violations by Comcast, and to prevent future possibilities of unfairtreatment of internet users with “fast lanes”

Looking on Wikipedia, you get the explanation of “Net neutrality is the principle that Internetservice providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or chargedifferently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, ormethod of communication. For instance, under these principles, internet service providers areunable to intentionally block, slow down or charge money for specific websites and onlinecontent.” In addition, in other descriptions coming from articles talking about net neutrality, youget the explanation that net neutrality is simply rules made to keep things fair.

From what I understand of Ajit Pai’s argument, he is arguing that the net neutrality rules aresimply there for theoretical use, and that no company would do any of the things that would beillegal without the laws, and so net neutrality is nothing more than over handed and unneededlaws that do nothing. His argument is that we as a nation should no longer keep the internetmicromanaged by the government; and instead, we should have the net micro managed bycompanies, so we can have a more competitive internet.

Such an idea is faulty; the rules are there to keep away the “possibility” of underhand tactics bycompanies, blocking content, prioritizing sites and users, slowing access, and completelycontrolling what a user themselves can see is wrong. Net Neutrality is important because theyprevent any of these things from being possible, and level the playing field making things morefair and honest; if what this Net Neutrality prevents is only theoretical then that means it is meantas a prevention. Just like how our bill of rights prevents injustice on our rights, so does netneutrality online. For Ajit Pai to argue that Net Neutrality is neither beneficial or negative, and isunneeded, is like if when our nation was founded everyone said “Oh, ‘the bill of rights?’ wedon’t need that, we as a people know better, and would never do these harmful things.”

Net neutrality exists to keep things from being unfair, to keep things neutral. Users should notneed to pay for every site they go to, and should not have unfair “service plans” for the internet.While the FCC is claiming that they are attempting to “restore internet freedoms” I do notbelieve giving companies or any organization the option to prevent or slow access to informationis internet freedom. Without net neutrality, we will be losing a critical right in our moderntechno-centric era.

I would urge you all to research this subject on your own as it is definitely important, and this isjust my understanding I have gathered while researching the subject. I would recommendlooking into the FCC itself, as well as:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/opinion/courts-net-neutrality-fcc.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FNet%20Neutrality

https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/technology/fcc-net-neutrality.html

Net neutrality is fundamental, and the act should not be repealed only because there is a beliefthat it only prevents “theoretical harm” and that companies only need to be open about theirwrongs to be fair.