Why Net Neutrality is Vital

Several weeks ago, you may have heard the term "Net Neutrality" appearing in the news, but had little to no knowledge as to what it meant, other than it was probably related to Trump (which basically everything we see in the news is).

To put it in its simplest form, net neutrality is the idea that ISP's must treat all online data equally. An ISP is an internet service provider, like AT&T or Verizon.

It’s expected that when you go online, it won't matter what website you go on; every website should take roughly the same amount of time to load. Net neutrality allows this to happen. Without net neutrality, AT&T would have the choice to slow down certain websites' loading speeds (perhaps competitors of a certain enterprise?) An example of this would be slowing Hulu's loading speed so that consumers turn to Netflix, who paid the ISP more to do so.

Executive director of Open Media, Laura Tribe, compared the loss of net neutrality to cable packages. “So it means that you're going to start to see things like bundles the same way that we have sports packages and movie packages on TV. We'll start to see things like social media packages or news packages on the internet which means that you could be charged more for any individual piece.”

Though slower loading speeds may not seem serious, without net neutrality ISP's would have the chance to limit or completely silence websites information or opinions, thus limiting the freedom of the press and freedom of speech.

So why would anyone want to diminish net neutrality? Well, power-hungry capitalists would view net neutrality as a form of profit for them and for their corporate friends, who, through the abandonment of net neutrality, would be able to easily stake out their competitors. Unfortunately, on December 14 2017, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) voted to remove net neutrality in America.

Though the bill won’t be finalized likely for another several months, the prospect of losing net neutrality has the entire world shaking. "Net neutrality advocates have sounded alarms that the repeal could give internet providers too much control over how online content is delivered. It may also make it harder for the next generation of online services to compete, if they have to pay up to be placed in a so-called internet fast lane."

Not only would it be aggravating for certain websites to be slow, but it would limit our access to information, and when we only have one source of information, then that one source of information becomes the truth, as it is all we know. If, for example, Trump decides that he disagrees with CNN, deems it as "fake news" and decides to pay the ISP's to bedevil with their domain access, then U.S citizens would be unable to receive any information that CNN may provide, therefore only receiving information Trump wants them to receive.

And though the FCC are claiming that ISP’s will not censor certain information or websites, ISP Verizon already promised they would. ‘A Verizon attorney told the FCC that they believe that, as broadband providers, they “transmit the speech of others” and deserve the right to what they call “editorial discretion.” “Just as a newspaper is entitled to decide which content to publish and where,” the attorney said, “broadband providers may feature some content over others.”’ Literally contradicting its entire foundation.

Luckily, Canada has fairly concrete rules around net neutrality and it is unlikely that that will change in the near future. However, Canadians will still be affected by the FCC’s abolishment of net neutrality. If corporations such as Netflix or Spotify are forced to pay more for their services to remain untampered with, they will need to regain the money elsewhere, such as charging more from consumers monthly.

Nonetheless, a future without net neutrality is unfortunately becoming more and more imminent and we must brace ourselves for what it has to hold!

And I don't want my blog to load slowly.

Love, Isabela :)

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/14/technology/fcc-net-neutrality-vote/index.html