Hello! This is my revised version of my second assignment on net neutrality. It covers why net neutrality is so good and why it's super awesome. Thanks for reading!
Remember net neutrality? It’s the principle that the Internet should remain open and free without prioritization. It’s the idea that we should keep the Internet as it is instead of changing it to please ISPs who solely want to exploit it as a business opportunity. The Internet is not simply a business opportunity. It is an innovative, educational, and plain old fun experience that can offer us all great things. Let’s discuss why net neutrality is good and why we must fight in order to achieve Internet freedom.
Net neutrality is an issue of Internet freedom: we use the Internet for gaming, streaming, reading the news, and also for research and homework. It has become the main medium for not only watching content, but also learning what’s going on in the world. According to the Pew Research Center, “50% of the public now cites the Internet as a main source for national and international news.” We’d rather check a #hashtag on Twitter than watch the TV nowadays. And if this is so, we need to preserve net neutrality, which would allow us to continue to use the Internet in these diverse ways.
However, the freedom of the Internet includes not only the ability to access all of it, but also for it to be a fast and reliable tool. According to freepress.org, “Computer scientists at Microsoft have shown that people will visit a website less often if it’s slower than a rival site by more than 250 milliseconds.” This is Internet culture. We want instant access and if we can’t get that, we move on. Net neutrality ensures that all websites funded by big corporations AND the one-man business are treated equally in reliability and speed. It would preserve Internet freedom by allowing every website to be easily accessible to any user.
Freedom is important to the Internet because it allows us to do anything and create anything. But without net neutrality, freedom will not be part of the Internet due to paid prioritization and the two-tiered “fast lane” and “slow lane” Internet. Having net neutrality ensures that we can be creative in any way we want or that we can use the Internet for education -- for school or for becoming an educated member of society. The ISPs say that net neutrality cannot be part of the Internet because it doesn’t solve the bandwidth issue -- bandwidth-heavy websites take up much more data than other websites -- but that does not mean that we have to get rid of net neutrality, our freedom.
There is another solution: fiber optic. Fiber uses light energy instead of electricity to transmit data. Netflix CEO and net neutrality supporter writes, "a single fiber-optic strand the diameter of a human hair can carry 101.7 terabits of data per second, enough to support nearly every Netflix subscriber watching content in HD at the same time," in Wired Magazine. This is the beauty of technology: it's amazing and it's constantly changing. Since it’s incredibly fast, it has the ability to resolve the bandwidth issue. So, the ISPs can’t use bandwidth as an excuse to get rid of net neutrality rules.
Forget the ISPs and let’s focus on why net neutrality is so good. Net neutrality gives us the power of creativity and innovation. It gives us our voice. The open Internet allows the everyday person to pursue their innovative ideas, 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, “Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture.” We, the Internet people, are fighting for that kind of creativity that changes and rocks the world.
From Save the Internet
I hope I have done my job in convincing you why net neutrality is worth fighting for. If so, please check out Save the Internet. This website is dedicated to the net neutrality cause. There are many ways to show your support, a handful of those ways being Internet-based thanks to our freedom of speech on the Internet. If you believe as I do that net neutrality is a free speech issue and an important part of the Internet, then please help spread the word.
UPDATE: On November 10, President Obama released a statement supporting net neutrality. It is everything the public has wanted to hear from our President, and it will hopefully cause the FCC to think even more seriously about supporting every aspect of net neutrality. It is refreshing to see our President owning up to his promise to save net neutrality when he originally took office. It’s a good day for net neutrality! Read more here.
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