This past week saw a major announcement from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai. He announced he would be moving forward with a plan to de-regulate net neutrality. Now many of you might be wondering “what the heck is net neutrality?” Unfortunately I have found this to be a common response whenever the subject is brought up. Let me help shed some light.
What is Net Neutrality?
In 2015 the FCC passed regulation on internet service providers (ISPs) requiring them to withhold from blocking, slowing, or interfering in any way with broadband traffic online. This measure was passed to ensure that large companies could not provide themselves with an advantage over others by slowing down their competitors websites and made it impossible take advantage of consumers by limiting the content they are provided from the internet.
With this new announcement calling for an end to net neutrality, it could mean the beginning of the end of the internet we’ve come to know.
What could happen if Net Neutrality is repealed?
As with most systems in capitalism that go unchecked, this proposal would only hurt the consumers and benefit the already large and extremely wealthy companies to become even more so. There is literally no benefit to this rule if you do not work for a large ISP.
Without net neutrality, ISPs could section the internet into fast and slow services, providing benefits to the companies wealthy enough to pay ISPs to continue to have good service for their websites. As of now, small startup companies have the exact same broadband speeds for their websites as major corporations. Take that away and it would create yet another hurdle for small companies to leap over to even consider being successful.
We might also see ISPs blocking websites that disagree with their political views, or at the very least slowing down their services. This would easily be an infringement upon free speech. Although I may not agree with a lot of things politically, I still stand with the fact we absolutely must provide an equal opportunity for both sides of the argument to state their views in order to show a true representation of the overall opinion. Not to mention should one political party be favored over another, many could be led to believe what is being told must be true as it’s the only thing being shown to them.
Blocking websites, or charging even more for simply adequate use would be something everyone feels. Everyone enjoys Netflix, but what if Verizon decided they didn’t like the way Netflix was handling their business and decided to throttle its streaming speed until Netflix changed the way it did business with them? Right now that isn’t possible and is enforced by net neutrality.
What can we do?
Initially the thing to do was to submit a filing to the FCC’s website communicating support for net neutrality and Title II oversight of ISPs. Unfortunately, FCC chairman Ajit Pai has now come out and said he will be disregarding any filings that do not make a legal or factual base. That means he’s disregarding almost all of the 20 million filings sent to them in support of net neutrality (great democratic skills there huh?).
One current way you would be able to help support net neutrality is to contact your representatives in congress (there is a wonderful app I use called ‘Countable’ that directly links you to your representatives based on where you live and gives you their email and phone number. It also provides updates on current bills and how they voted).
Another is to contact the FCC members directly. Here are their email contacts:
Ajit Pai, Chairman (Republican) - Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov
Mignon Clyburn, Commissioner (Democract) - Mignon.Clyburn@fcc.gov
Michael O’Rielly, Commissioner (Republican) - Mike.O’Rielly@fcc.gov
Brendan Carr, Commissioner (Republican) - Brendan.Carr@fcc.gov
Last but certainly not least, you can spread the word. Not many people understand or even know about net neutrality and the ways it protects us. If you educate others on the subject there is a much more likely chance to make congress back down from passing this bill.
Let’s save the internet people.
