The terminology “net neutrality” has been thrown around quite a bit in the past few weeks. The large presence of this term in the news was first sparked by a case the US saw in January, in which Verizon challenged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over its net neutrality policy, formally known as the Open Internet rules. As BBC News explains, the Court, “Effectively left regulation in limbo … opening the way for companies to start charging fees to carry data on its networks.” Following this, Netflix was forced to agree to pay a fee to Comcast in order to improve the speed their service reaches consumers.   

This has left companies outraged at Internet provider’s ability to charge for a faster Internet speed.  A comparison can be made to a plane flight: the wealthy flyers that can afford to sit first class get to travel in comfort, while the rest are crammed in to small and uncomfortable seats. Similarly, companies that can afford to pay Internet providers go into an Internet “fast lane,” allowing customers to receive their data quicker.    

Net neutrality would require that all data and content be treated equally, with no special speed for those who can pay.  The Internet most effectively serves as a marketplace for ideas, allowing them to be exchanged freely and fairly.  Eliminating net neutrality threatens this.    

Without net neutrality, Internet providers will be able to discriminate what among different types of content, apps, or services. This allows them to become de facto gatekeepers, giving them control over what content survives and what falls to the wayside. Content providers would then be pushed to spend more to get their content into the hands of the American people. Thus, less information overall, specifically from providers that can’t afford to pay, is available to the American people, lessening our access to the free and open marketplace of ideas the internet has to offer.    

Producing quickly-loading content should not be a privilege reserved only for the wealthy, and wealthy organizations should not have a monopoly on content consumption. Only by upholding net neutrality will the Internet remain the marketplace of ideas it was intended to be: one that is free and open for all, regardless of economic status.