In Defense of Net Neutrality
What IS net neutrality?! And why is it important?
Net neutrality is the idea that the internet should be an open communication system. That ISPs, the corporations that provide internet (like Comcast and Verizon), shouldn’t be able to filter how fast you get to certain sites, an idea I like to call “ site discrimination.” The current proposal is to remove net neutrality and allow ISPs to dictate the speed of your connections to certain sites or internet applications.
The best example I’ve heard is this:
If Comcast (or another ISP) offers some sort of video streaming platform (oh weird! They do!?), they can make your experience at their competitors’ sites (Netflix or Hulu) worse. By giving you a slower connection to their competitors (or potentially sites they just don’t like), they are able to make their streaming platform more desirable by comparison.
The thing that makes me the most mad is they just want more control so they can increase their bottom line, while we have almost zero choice when it comes to which ISP we get to have (most parts of the country only have one option for high-speed cable). I don’t blame them for trying — it would make their businesses able to hold their competitors for ransom, and tighten their grip on all of their customers.
Now, proponents of the idea say “oh, they would never do that! The free market and capitalism means people would be discouraged from using any ISP that site-discriminates like that!” This grinds my gears in two directions.
1) They’ve proven to be untrustworthy and have done just that. In 2013, Comcast intentionally slowed service to Netflix during a negotiation and then magically turned it back on after it was resolved! What a coincidence!
2) the “free market” argument is grade-A malarkey. If I have one ISP that serves me high speed internet in Boston, MA, and I don’t like them, my other option is… who? Competitors can offer ACCESS to the internet, but have no control over the physical cable that comes to my house. Therefore their service is 10–20x slower than Comcast, making them not so much a competitor, as they are a shitty “option B”. The best analogy I can think of is: it would be like there being 2 types of cars. A Ferrari (which your tax money helped build) and a horse-and-buggy. Your Ferrari gets you from home to work in 10 minutes, but every time you want to go to the Lamborghini-owned grocery store the engine crawls to a halt. Now the horse-and-buggy might even get you to the Lamborghini grocery store faster, but if you switched over to the horse-and-buggy entirely, it would take 4 hours to get to work.
The free market argument only works when there’s actually reliable competition. In a world that has been divvied up by ISPs like cartels owning street corners and drug territory, there isn’t really any competition at all — nothing selling the same blue meth at least…
Wow. Ok, now that we’ve covered some of the pieces based in fact, let’s imagine a world in which there is no net-neutrality at all, and add a little 1984 spin to it…
The implications grow far worse than just padding ISP’s bottom-line. If they control who goes where or how much speed to allot to certain sites they have wayyyy more control than they need. What happens if there is a politician they favor? “Maybe we’ll just slow down the speed a little bit to Senator Whosawhatsit! It’s for a good cause…” There’s nothing saying they can’t slow speeds to their opponents site, donation platform, organization, etc. NOTE: I have no evidence to back this up, but I haven’t seen any evidence to prove they can’t either, so I’m assuming the worst.
My biggest concern with the whole thing is if there IS to be a revolution. That we all decide this government is shit and we want a new one (a la The Declaration of Independence), it’s not going to happen with guns (even if we have AR-15s like some gun advocates seem to believe). It’s going to happen with information sharing and technology. The internet is going to play a crucial role.
The problem with this and so many other controversial topics is that so many of our politicians (on both sides of the aisle) rely on lobbyists with deep pockets and agendas that differ drastically from the American people. Until this changes, laws will be created and regulations removed to pad these corporate behemoths bottom lines. So contact your representatives, and let them know this decision is the wrong one.
No one should have their hand on the hose of the internet. Not the government, not your ISP. It’s a human right to equal and unadulterated access to the world wide knowledge repository we know as the internet. I don’t want anyone taking that right away from me, and I will always fight for a fair and open internet.