REVISED: The issue that no one is talking about, but affects us all

Hello, all! This is a revised aka better version of my assignment on net neutrality! Enjoy!
(Note:  I don't know why the pictures are squished....sorry.)

No more Netflix. No more YouTube. Slow Internet. How would that make you feel? This is our 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.

So what exactly is net neutrality? It is a concept coined in 2003 by law professor Tim Wu. His paper explains net neutrality and it’s relation to broadband discrimination, which is what we’re dealing with in present net neutrality issues. Wu explains in his paper that “proponents of open access see it as a structural remedy to guard against an erosion of the ‘neutrality’ of the network as between competing content and applications.” So, even back in 2003, Wu made it clear that net neutrality is about making the Internet a neutral place for all people to use and create things.

Tim Wu, coined "net neutrality"

There is so much talk about net neutrality lately -- mostly in the tech world -- because the big companies, also known as Internet Service Providers (ISPs), plan to restrict our access on the Internet. They could control what you do and where you go on the Internet. This goes against what Wu initially defined for net neutrality, which in simpleton terms “argues that no bit of information should be prioritized over another” according to the Open Computing Facility at Berkeley. It’s annoying that the initial principles of the Internet called for neutrality without any legal intervention, but now everything on the Internet seems to be regulated by the legal system.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the federal organization that will soon decide net neutrality’s fate. But, why are they getting involved? Well, what’s at issue with net neutrality is bandwidth. I will admit, on the behalf of all of us with an Internet addiction, that we use a lot of bandwidth. We watch things on Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube constantly, and the ISPs 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. So, while net neutrality initially meant that the Internet was solely governed by the user, it is now being controlled by the government....joy.

If you haven’t figure this out already, net neutrality is good! It will keep innovation on the Internet. Big companies -- including Google, Kickstarter, and Netflix -- and Internet users fight for net neutrality because they believe that creating a “closed internet” would stamp out innovation. Startups like Google and Facebook dominate the Internet today. However, if these regulations were put in place back then, they wouldn’t have made it because they wouldn’t have been able to afford to beat out the competition by paying for priority access in the “fast lane.” Can you imagine a world without the ease and magic Google? The Internet is an awesome place for creativity and innovation and net neutrality helps keep that safe. This is why we, as Internet lovers, need to educate ourselves about net neutrality and fight for it.