Com125 Assignment12: Net Neutrality: The matter of choice on the web

Network Neutrality was the term which I was not familiar with before this week’s assignment, but as I kept searching on the net, the debate for or against Network Neutrality has already been growing. As above, the video clip explains explains why network neutrality is an important issue for internet users through a comparisons to traditional utilities.

What is Network Neutrality?

Put simply, Network Neutrality means no discrimination. Network Neutrality prevents Internet providers from speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its online source, ownership or destination (http://www.savetheinternet.com/). If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level. According to Public Knowledge, Network Neutrality is about the choice (http://www.publicknowledge.org/). Who chooses to see and uses the contents on the internet? That is us who use the internet everyday. Anytime, we can connect to the internet and get online contents that we want. What makes this possible is ‘network neutrality’. This is because NN prevents the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) blocking access to the websites that you chooses to see.

Now, anytime and anywhere with an acess of the internet, you can go onto Google search engine to get online resources. But, imagine, one day, you can have a problem to access to Google website which possibly means you are restricted to access Google, or getting a really slow access on it. In that case, you will choose to go Yahoo or some other search engines to get the resource. This scenario is possible due to network companies’ financial interest. If Google signed an exclusive agreement with another search engine company for example, Yahoo. It would then be Google’s best interest to converge you to use Yahoo search engine website. Here is the thing. The founder of World Wide Web, Tim Berners Lee said that the free market does have certain rules and restrictions, which in itself creates a dialectical relationship. I only hope that the interests of business do not out weight the interest of our "free" society.

Not only in an economical aspect, but also in social and political aspects, Network Neutrality plays an important role. The internet contents are generally open sources to people who want to get them. In the democratic society which we are in, has freedom of speech, and freedom of choice. A huge open source like the internet should not be able to control the users due to economical purposes of network companies. Net Neutrality is the reason why the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech online. It protects the consumer's right to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider. With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data — not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service. Without Network Neutrality, the internet will be more like TV or Radio stations that broadcasting contents are decided by the network owners. If the internet is controlled by the certain regulations of private media corporations, the internet is no longer regarded as an innovative and revolutionary medium for us. Therefore, Network Neutrality should sustain on the web to parallel opportunity for freedon of choice of us.