My stance on Net Neutrality

My professor recently brought up a question that I'd like to share my answer to. We are not preventing progress by holding onto the principle that the internet should remain an open standard. In fact, by ensuring that the internet acts as an open, nondiscriminatory pathway we have only promoted progress. The architecture of the internet has not changed very much since the 1989 introduction of the World Wide Web as a standard for sharing and accessing information. But the content on the internet has changed drastically in those - almost 20 - years. Each year new services and new techniques are brought onto our World Wide Web and each year millions more people gain access to an open, unrestricted internet. By allowing owners of the networks to restrict flow we would cripple innovation online more than we could ever imagine. It actually may not be hard to imagine how badly it would be crippled. As a society we do not interact with closed networks often. But there is one example I would like to compare a closed internet to: cell phone networks. Cell phone networks are closed. Cell phone network providers sell phones that have been locked to their network, so that consumers are forced into using their service.. even more so they specifically lock out features in phones that are there at the factory such as computer connectivity - allowing someone to put MP3s on their phone for free so that instead they have to pay $3.00 for a 30 second MP3 ringtone from the network provider. That would be how network providers would handle business on the internet if it were closed, and that is why they want more control. So that this kind of seediness can be allowed. We need an open internet, and we will always push for an open internet, but the telecommunication corporations are always going to push for profit, while stifling innovation. Imagine if telecoms were allowed to degrade the quality of your voice on your home phone when you called a doctors office, library or university and only permitted standard quality calls to businesses that paid a premium subscription. THIS is exactly what net neutrality prohibits and this is exactly what telecoms want to do to the internet. Congress would never allow telecoms to control their phone networks this way and I believe they will continue stepping in to defend net neutrality.

April 29, 2008 4:21 PM

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