Worrying Issue of Net Neutrality

A while ago, we discussed Net Neutrality in our journalism class.  I’ll be honest, I had never really heard of the issue until we talked about it in class. Since then, I’ve seen it pop up everywhere. (Tomorrow is actually the day that courts the will reach a verdict on whether or not they will allow these internet “Fast and Slow Lanes.”) For people who don’t know what net neutrality is, here’s an explanation accompanied by a beautiful illustration drawn by myself.

Many people call the state which our current internet is in “open internet”, where the internet is free, publicly available, and can be built upon by anyone with a connection. However, those against net neutrality want to change the internet so that major providers such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable control at what speeds different websites go. Two things will happen if they’re able to do this.

A.) They will makes tons of profits. The websites who want their load times to be faster will need to pay a fee which will, most likely, only be a possibility to larger websites like Youtube or Google.

B.) Internet Providers will choose what goes on the internet and what doesn’t. Doing this is a bad idea because then where will those unable to pay the premium go to speak their voice? No one will want to stay on their website because load times are so slow.

How this affects you is that those small websites that can’t afford to pay the large premium will have far slower load times than larger websites. So, if you’re not rich and wanted to start a websites, you probably couldn’t because you would never be able to pay the premium. Since you can’t pay the premium, people who want to see your site will leave due to the longer wait times. This takes away from the “public and can be built upon” part of the internet. Think about 50 years from now if there was no net neutrality. We would all be stuck with the same websites. Load times on larger websites would be the only thing that people could stand, so money from advertisements would only go to larger websites. Advertisers probably wouldn't even bother with websites that hadn't paid the premium. Larger websites now are the only companies able to pay the premium. No one else can join this system without having enough to pay first.