-
Essay / What Repealing Net Neutrality Would Achieve
Ten years ago, I remember having to wait a few minutes to watch a short video of horrible quality, due to the fact that the Internet was terribly slow and expensive. Personally, I can't imagine having to suffer from a slow website again. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The idea of net neutrality is that all internet traffic has equal access to bandwidth/speeds. Getting rid of them would be like allowing highway speed limit signs that gave priority to Nissan cars to go 80 mph, but every other car must go 30 mph because they don't help the highway. Or, conversely, it would be like FedEx delivering packages to rich neighborhoods only because of the better conditions, leaving poor neighborhoods without any shipments since shipping companies don't want to go there unless they pay more for their own convenience and their profit. On the Internet, this could happen with ISPs being able to pick winners and losers by, for example, giving priority speeds to Hulu and throttling Netflix, since Comcast owns NBC, which is a partner of Hulu. Or, an ISP could speed up pages of information that it believes should be heard and slow down those that it deems repugnant. Overall, the loss of net neutrality could result in an uneven flow of information, which would go against the core beliefs of an open internet for all. , even partially condemning our freedom of expression and press. Internet service providers (ISPs) can structure their services in a way that benefits them and makes them the most money. For example, Netflix, a leading movie/TV streaming website used by hundreds of thousands of people, could be one of the worst affected. Internet service providers that have their own video streaming sites could potentially slow down Netflix causing you to reconsider your decision and switch to their own fast and reliable streaming site. This would bring more revenue to the ISP as more people pay for their video streaming site. Additionally, even if customers decide not to switch providers, the ISP would still win since they could easily charge more money to speed up Netflix. As a result, people will find themselves stuck in a difficult situation, as they will have to pay more than they should to enjoy their own entertainment and will eventually have to settle for the slightly cheaper option of the ISP's video site. This shows how uneven and unregulated the Internet would be without Net Neutrality which allowed all domains to operate at the same speed. Additionally, ISPs will have full control of the free Internet. Without regulation, this would mean that ISPs could outright block any websites they don't want you to have access to. AT&T, Verizon and Comcast will be able to decide whose voice is heard and whose voice is not heard. It would also potentially be difficult to find another service to switch to, as the ISP would be able to censor any other competing company with their prices. Overall, this would be similar to a censored communist country, except in this case it's not the government that decides what is seen and what isn't, it's your own Internet service provider. The Internet would no longer be a free space, where information circulated freely and all services were treated in the same way. Net neutrality is very important.