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Net Neutrality (Essay)

A lot of people in the United States have access to the internet, or will at least use it sometime during their lives. Most of those people take it for granted and believe that as long as they have the connection they can visit the sites they want to. But that freedom is dwindling and may disappear forever without a law to protect it. A law called Net Neutrality.

Net Neutrality means that the network (internet) should be neutral, i.e. non-discriminating. That means no company should have the right to control what websites their users visit. Any person should be able to view any lawful website at anytime and at the speed their connection is allotted, whether their ISP approves of the content on that site or not. But that doesn’t always happen, and the internet providers don’t want it that way.

What the internet companies want to do is charge people and websites that use “too much” of the internet extra fees to continue to use it. People who watch too many streaming videos, or download too much music will have to pay more to use the internet the way they used to, or buy a separate package. Some companies would charge to send and receive email, and because they would control the internet there’d be no where else to go. Time Warner’s AOL plans on having a “spam bypass” system that would allow companies to pay America Online to bypass their spam filters, clogging users email boxes with internet advertisements. There’d be nothing anyone could do about it because the internet would be controlled by the companies. Large websites, or sites that get a lot of traffic would have to pay a hefty fine or they would not be able to reach their visitors. This is especially true for online companies like Google, Amazon, and Ebay, and anyone or site that is using “too much” of their ISP’s resources would be charged. Ed Whitacre of AT&T says “Now what they want to do is use my pipes for free, but I ain’t going to let them do that… there’s going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they’re using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?” But the internet users already do pay, even Google pays a monthly fee to connect to the internet. Should they also be charged to use it as well?

If Net Neutrality is not enacted the internet users know today will no longer exist. If Yahoo paid the fine and Google didn’t, or if the company a person was on didn’t like Google, Google would not load or would load so slowly the person would give up. Some people say that these sites can afford to pay a little extra, and that they’re just being greedy not to. But Google wasn’t always the business is is today. It was started by everyday people who had a dream. Without Net Neutrality that won’t be able to happen again, and that’s what the Telecom corporations want.

Television is very popular, but it is dominated by companies. 99% of all the content on television is created by them. The last one percent is from the few city-wide independent stations that often don’t get picked up by the cable companies. That’s the way it is in the other media as well. Only 5% of the press is independently owned. In radio only the AM stations have not been overrun while the rest is largely controlled by Clear Channel. The internet is the only place where a regular person can have their say. 60% of the content on the internet is created and maintained by everyday people. Any person with a connection can create a website or blog. Because of the demand for the news and opinion sites, cable companies feel the internet is taking views away from them. Why visit CNN.com or watch Fox News when there are more interesting and clever news sources online? Corporate America doesn’t like not being in control, and they’ve already conquered every other medium, why not this one?

The frightening thing is it’s already happening. In 2004 an internet company in North Carolina stopped their customers from using any rival phone companies. In 2005 the Canadian company Shaw followed suit by interfering with the services of any customer using another online phone company. Telnus, another Canadian internet provider blocked their users from visiting a website that was sympathetic to telecommunications union workers. In April 2007 AOL blocked all emails that mentioned a website opposed to the companies new paid email project. Even more recently in early August 2007, AT&T censored a Pearl Jam concert when a band member began saying things of a political nature that AT&T did not agree with. At first they claimed that it was an isolated incident and that it had never happened before. That was until fans began digging up the truth. After 8 more allegedly censored concerts came to light, the company admitted they had censored performances in the past. And on August 21st it was discovered that Comcast, Time Warner, and other companies had been cutting the connections of anyone that was downloading via Bittorrent, or was downloading or uploading too much in their eyes.

But it is for everyone’s own good, the telephone and cable companies say, that it is for the good of the internet. They claim Net Neutrality would only hurt the internet, and that it is heading for an “information highway traffic jam”. So what is their solution? Charge more, not fix the problem by building a better network. In fact when the internet was starting to grow in the 90’s the Telecom companies promised to build a network that could hold on the content that was being created, but they never did. They say and promise a lot of things that aren’t true and never happen. Should internet users believe them when they say the price hikes would only affect sites like Google, and that costs for regular users would drop dramatically? Especially when considering the fact that most content on the internet is privately owned? Would the internet even be worth it anymore? There would be no more opportunities for a site to become the next YouTube or Amazon, or even for a person to become the next Perez Hilton. It would be completely controlled, just like everything else.

So if you want the internet to remain a free and open place where you can share your opinions, or just be able to visit the sites you want to support Net Neutrality. Write to your Congressman and declare that you want Net Neutrality. Without it the internet will suffer the same fate as television and radio. Everyone else is joining together, even MoveOn.org and the Christian Coalition are working together on this issue, why not you?

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