Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality

Anthony Hare, Staff Writer

Net Neutrality is an issue that I personally believe is one that will soon be in the national spotlight. Net Neutrality is a slippery slope that could lead to a wide-scale abuse of millions of Internet users and their Internet access. With that possible peril in mind what exactly is Net Neutrality?

Net Neutrality is the protection of the common Internet user’s current Internet capabilities. What many ISP’s want to institute are ‘speed bumps’ in all of their users’ downloading ability. What this would do is that ISP’s could institute these ‘speed bumps’ and then charge their patrons a larger amount just for the Internet speeds maintained beforehand. This would make ISP’s quite a bit more money, but this would cause the millions of users of the free Internet to have to suffer. Net Neutrality is a global push to prevent this from happening.

So other than Internet Service Providers making a larger profit off of the depletion of Net Neutrality, what other pro’s are there to a lack of Net Neutrality? A great and honest reason that is brought up is that it would help ISP’s crack down on illegal activities. The largest illegal activity that this would be fighting is illegal file swapping. A study from the Policy for Policy Innovation states that up to 12.5 billion dollars are deprived from the music industry each year from music piracy, a form of illegal file swapping. That alone is a big issue that the depletion of Net Neutrality would help fight against. Also a lack of Net Neutrality would help special entities that need constant Internet access such as medical services.

Those are just a few of the reasons why Net Neutrality should be ended, but the voice for it is much stronger. That is for one reason. The Internet is a part of people’s lives that shouldn’t be controlled for the profit of one private company. Not only would it be wrong to abuse the common customers by making them pay more for the Internet they had before, but it also sullies the greatest and most helpful invention in the past century. The Internet.

So while it may not seem like a current issue in contrast to the physical issues presented by our current world, Net Neutrality is something that should be defended for the preservation of the Internet and for the protection of the greatest tool we have to help us progress as a society.