A different way of understanding net neutrality

Net neutrality has been a buzzword over the past few years. Defined as simply as possible, net neutrality means free and equal access to everything on the Internet. People know that this is a good thing, and have fought Congress in their attempts to regulate it, but many people still don’t fully understand why net neutrality is vital.

Net neutrality protects the Internet from providers intentionally “discriminating or charging differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication”, according to Steve Lohr, a journalist for the New York Times who has covered technology, business, and economics for over 20 years. For example, if the Internet becomes more heavily regulated, an Internet search provider, or ISP, like Comcast could slow down its connections to CNN, resulting in slower speeds in an attempt to deter people from visiting the news source. This would cause both frustration and inconvenience on the user’s end. Net neutrality protects users from this discrimination.

Bills proposed by Congress in the past, such as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act), attempted to give the FCC and ISPs the power to regulate the Internet more directly. These bills were fought by the public and ultimately did not pass. You might remember some of your favorite websites, like Google, Wikipedia, or Reddit, being blacked out for a day a few years ago; that was because over 100,000 major websites coordinated a day of protest to show their opposition towards SOPA and PIPA.

While people know that net neutrality is a good thing, a lot of them just go along supporting it without knowing why. If net neutrality were promoted a little differently, people might understand why they need to support it. For net neutrality to be more of an understandable topic, it needs to be explained in real terms and examples that demonstrate how it will affect people.

A good way to look at it is this: any bill or person that is attempting to diminish net neutrality is anti-Netflix or anti-Youtube. These sites, along with countless others, could be affected negatively by more stringent regulations of the Internet. Attaching labels like anti-Netflix and anti-Youtube help put net neutrality into a more understandable perspective. Without net neutrality, nothing is protecting us from the FCC and Internet providers discriminating against content on the Internet. They would have the power to severely slow down connections to whatever sites they please and make it inconvenient for you to access them.

The fight for net neutrality isn’t over yet. If you want to help support it, here’s how. Contact your Congress member using https://contactingcongress.org. You can also help support groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union in their fight to protect net neutrality.