Sorry, you can’t access this website. No more Netflix. No more Hulu. No more YouTube. Slow internet. How would that make you feel? This is our near future if big companies get what they want. I’m talking about net neutrality, the idea that every internet user should have unrestricted, free access to all of the internet; that is how it is now. Big businesses plan to restrict access or discriminate against users depending on what websites users visit.
Basically, the company that connects you to the internet, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), would be able to control what you do and where you go on the internet. Comcast, for example, wants to block certain customers’ access to websites that take up a lot of bandwidth, such as our favorites, Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, according to Public Knowledge news source. Big companies want to charge us more to access these bandwidth-heavy websites. And the people who don’t pay the extra fee either can’t access the website, or, if they can, they will be in the “slow lane” instead of the “fast lane.” This creates a two-tiered and unfair internet, according to Michael Weinberg of Public Knowledge. They could even direct users away from a competitor’s website.
This is unacceptable because it means that innovation will be extinguished. Millions of internet users and many internet companies like Google, Kickstarter, Netflix, etc. are coming together to fight for net neutrality. Everyone on the side of net neutrality mutually believes that creating a “closed internet” would stamp out innovation. Startups from years ago like Google or Facebook are absolutely huge today; however, if these proposed regulations were put in place back then, they may have never gotten off the ground. Can you imagine a world without Google? You couldn’t “google” how to ask a guy out, or watch YouTube cat videos, or use Google Drive to keep your life organized.
Without net neutrality, bigger, richer companies could buy priority access from ISPs, which means that they would get the faster, more reliable access for their websites. This leaves competitors in the dust, specifically competitors that are unable to pay what the big names can pay. Not everyone can afford to keep up. Thus, it makes the internet an uneven playing field for the new innovative startups and for us everyday internet users. Not to mention, if companies are able to buy the priority access from ISPs, they get to charge us an additional cost for using the bandwidth-heavy websites we love so much.
What do the big companies get out of doing this? Money. Lots of money. According to Carmel Lobello of The Week, many people have access to the internet and that makes being an ISP a “very lucrative business.” So, they’re making boatloads of money and they want to keep it coming. However, the “internet subscriber growth rate is finally starting to peak,” since most people have internet services already, which means “their profits will start leveling off,” says Lobello. If this isn’t plain enough already, let me make it clear: the big companies are greedy and are trying to find ways to keep the business as lucrative as possible.
While the big companies fight for greed, we, the internet people, fight for freedom. On September 10, thousands of websites and hundreds of thousands of internet users took action for net neutrality; this can be seen on www.battleforthenet.com. Tumblr, Vimeo, Netflix, Kickstarter, and many more websites all donned the #InternetSlowDown banners and infographics on their websites. This was a push against the FCC and the big companies. Everyone is fighting hard for net neutrality, for the reality is that the FCC and big companies, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and Verizon, all have immense power and influence in this argument. Our opinions on net neutrality matter. But these companies have a bigger voice over the rest of us. I don’t want these big companies to erase my internet freedom or terminate all of the creative content I access daily on YouTube. This fight is personal for all of us who love and constantly use the internet. It’s personal yet hardly anyone outside of the tech world knows about it. Therefore, I write this blog to inform others as well as spark a fuse among the passionate internet users out there.
Andrew Slack has sparked a major fuse about net neutrality. Slack, of the nonprofit organization, The Harry Potter Alliance, is an activist for many of the world’s big issues today. He relays the importance of net neutrality by explaining its impact on fighting for other big issues: “Without [net neutrality] your number one issue is dead in the water. Think about that: all of the issues you care about, swallowed by the mouths of a consolidated media hellmouth. LGBTQ equality, ending poverty, stopping war, immigration reform, racial equality, better health care, rights for the disabled, and on and on and on: thanks to the open Internet, we have a fighting chance to decrease [these issues in the world].” Slack gives us all a sense of how vital the internet is, from our antics on social media all the way to our activism on big issues in our world. Whatever our need is to be on the internet, we must all have full and free access to it.
I’m not only fighting to keep Netflix, Hulu, or YouTube, I’m fighting for creation. The content published on the internet daily is astronomical. While much of it may be cat videos and hilarious memes, a lot of it is also really amazing creative content. The open internet allows the everyday person to pursue their innovative ideas and creativity, and share it to the masses with a click of a button. I want this kind of creativity to be accessible for everyone on an equal level. English author Sir Ken Robinson said about creativity: “Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture.” I value net neutrality for its connection to innovation and creativity. Creativity is why everything around you exists today. It is what makes this world so amazing, and having net neutrality for the internet allows for that creativity and innovation. This is why I fight for net neutrality.
