Internet Death (Net Neutrality in Jeopardy)
- Ulysses
- Nov 29, 2017
- 2 min read
What millions of Americans are ignoring may be the most detrimental thing to affect their everyday lives this century. While we play away on Social Media, keep our ears perked for the latest celebrity gossip, or wait patiently for the next hilarious presidential tweet, you may not even realize that soon it may take a little longer to log on or even just view your favorite websites. All information on the internet should be treated the same and that’s the concept of a thing called Net Neutrality. It forbid companies from tamper with your internet speeds. These laws were put in place so that your service providers could not speed up or slow down your internet speed whenever they wanted.
“Why would they do that?” You ask.
“It’s important because ISPs are integrated companies and often own their own content,” says Christopher Terry, professor of media law at the University of Minnesota who supports net neutrality. “They have an economic incentive to direct you to content that they own in favor of other content.”
Well, if companies have no rules that regulate the download speed of the sites you visit, they can legally speed up the access to their affiliate sites and slow down the ones of their competitors. Some may not see this as the explosive issue that it truly is. They may not understand until it takes twenty minutes to gain access to an employer’s information. Or you may not be able to access it at all. Internet service providers have said in the past they wouldn’t violate any net neutrality policies anyway so the rules don’t really matter, yet some have been slightly changing their tune lately. Even Comcast (the largest in home internet service provider) has hinted about paid prioritization or a way to the fast lane of internet service. The regulations go back as far 2005 and were made official by the Obama administration in 2015. The FCC is planning to roll back the regulation when they vote on Dec. 14th. You can read more about net neutrality and why it is so important in the links below.
What is Net Neutrality?
Comcast Hints at Plan for Fast Lanes after Net Neutrality Repeal
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