Reality of Net Neutrality
What is Net Neutrality?
Over the last couple of years, the term “Net Neutrality” came into a portion of technological and political conversations. The term is used to represent an ideological standpoint, for proponents of free and open internet. The reason that the term “Net Neutrality” is currently relevant, is because of large Internet Service Providers (ISP) desire to sell, effectively, access to websites. ISPs want the ability to sell connection speeds to other large companies or simply place their own advertisements into other heavily trafficked websites.
What is the issue?
From a simple access perspective, the main issue is that the internet, as a collective body of knowledge or applications, is trying to be controlled by large ISPs. Currently, the problem is, “How do people effectively stop large corporations from controlling access?” If the answer is to let the government step in, then the government controls the internet (to some degree). Therefore, there are two main issues: The internet being controlled by corporations - potentially having monopolies or the internet being controlled by the government - to prevent the corporations from having control.
What I think:
The ideological standpoint of “Net Neutrality” is somewhat simple and easy to grasp. However, much like the philosophical standpoint of either libertarianism or classical liberalism, how “Net Neutrality” pans out in reality is very complicated. Furthermore, from my perspective, the big problem is that the proponents of “Net Neutrality” are very outspoken - but weak in numbers. For example, “Net Neutrality” is not a typical topic for conversation in a suburban blue collar home - but, Google is a big proponent and spokesman for “Net Neutrality”. Implicitly, Google being in your corner, for any sort of opinion, means you have a very strong backing. But more importantly, Google is, in my opinion, the pinnacle when it comes to companies that utilize the capabilities of open access to the internet.
From the background of, “Net Neutrality” is the ideological standpoint of free and open internet and “Net Neutrality” has control issues, whether governmental control and regulation, or ISPs who are wanting to control, or inject advertisements into heavily trafficked websites, my opinion becomes rather simple. In the same way that when GoDaddy came out as supporting SOPA they were heavily boycotted enough to change their opinion - the primary way to enact “Net Neutrality” - is through the wallets of the large corporations by mass boycotting.
The other opinion, that I in large part disagree with, is “Net Neutrality”, supported merely by government regulations. I think the backing, for this opinion, should not be the fickle and easily swayed government. The information alone of congressmen and congresswomen, not having an understanding of the internet but creating and proposing bills, from my perspective, means that they are just trying to achieve popular vote.
In my future blog posts, I will talk further about my opinion, opinions suggested by others and legal/political ramifications that arise from these opinions.
In conclusion, the final note I want to leave you with is, “Net Neutrality” is good, government and corporation control is bad.
Cheers,
Brandon
Sources and Inspiration:
No comments:
Post a Comment