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According to Ted Thurn, director of Government Affairs at IREM “It is safe to say that technology encompasses almost every facet of our professional and personal lives” (Thurn). Can we trust our privacy to the Internet? What would happen if someone decided to know everything about us? With net neutrality people are more secure online and will enjoy all online services with the same speed and connection quality, no matter if they want to read a book or watch a TV series on Netflix. Net neutrality offers online resources, same speed for services and data security which makes human lives easier and creates a connected environment. All of them would be affected if net neutrality is decided to end.
The meaning of the term net neutrality is “Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon should treat all content flowing through their cables and cell towers equally”, according to the article by Klint Finley ‘What Is Net Neutrality? The Complete WIRED Guide’. The definition gives the idea that Internet providers have control over what we download. Agreeing with net neutrality is enjoying of all the Internet content equally. That means that watching a YouTube video will have the same Internet speed as reading a book.
For service providers agreeing with net neutrality is ideal. The consumers should stay with a standardized price among all the competitors. But what would happen if we disagree with net neutrality? Internet providers would have the power to change Internet speed over different services. That would make the services pay more to Internet providers so they get more speed for their different purposes. Knowing that, the price consumers pay will raise as well so different services get the extra spending back. At the same time, the customers are not happy with the increased prices. That makes consumers stop their paid subscriptions to different services. So, what should every Internet service do? Depends on their goals and how much money vs clients they want to have.
But that’s not the only thing that net neutrality affects. It can also change the way data is protected and also the way people learn using online resources, such as books, journals, webpages, etc. The past few years different online courses started to be extremely popular within people who live far away from the schools that give the classes they’re interested on. “These developments have been possible because both distance learning educators and learners have maintained” (Yamagata-Lynch et al.). And that made different learning systems available online for long-distance learning. This doesn’t affect only the students who want to learn more, but it also affects the teachers who are constantly researching more information to give better knowledge to their students. One example of how it affects online learning is when a student wants to learn something. He goes on a webpage which he already pays a subscription to access exclusive material. Finds out that he has to pay more money to its Internet provider since download files from that website is slow. In a certain way, the student was not thinking about paying more. In cases where economic situation is important, students can't afford an extra service. With that said, it already shows that not agreeing with net neutrality is retrograde. Other example would be: a student having to download certain material for school. The webpage is not famous/popular enough to have a good Internet speed, such as any tiny personal journal of a writer that is not known by the community. The student definitely loses the opportunity to learn.
On the other side it also affects the way our data is saved online. For example. “In June, one of the toughest data privacy laws in the United States was passed with the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018” (Thurn). Thurn also says that it will give “California residents an array of new rights, among them the right to know what kinds of personal data companies have collected and why it was collected”. That said, with net neutrality, everyone can access different services to save their data or important information, such as banking accounts, credit cards, checking account, loans, etc.
If they remove net neutrality, services that involve security will be affected too. Two things can happen, or the services go more expensive or they reduce the burden on their users. But why? Because the service by itself is slower they need to stay with the same amount of consumers. With that solution every online service will lose customers. But the Internet providers won’t care about different online services losing customers since they want more money. But still, online services continue fighting against getting rid of net neutrality. For example, Netflix, has been fighting for this right since 2017. “We’re disappointed in the decision to gut #NetNeutrality protections that ushered in an unprecedented era of innovation, creativity & civic engagement. This is the beginning of a longer legal battle. Netflix stands w/ innovators, large & small, to oppose this misguided FCC order” (@netflix).
Don’t get me wrong. Most of the services and Internet providers agree with users having equal access to any online content but the differ with some of the rules and how they are going implement them. Before 2015 rules were different. The had much lighter regulatory hand used the 20 years before helped different services increase their Internet speed to give a more premium service. Creating then, good quality and bad quality companies. Having two different kinds of companies made consumers decide what were they paying for. Obviously, this solution was working better for all the providers. Being the best was important back then. The competition between services existed and was a real deal within the providers. Online services were not being affected at that time. But as the Internet was starting to be a ‘privilege’ all online services were caring about maintaining their user base and they didn’t go as big as they are right now. Different Internet providers such as Comcast and AT&T started acquiring content makers and some had feared some of the big companies like Netflix will get a reduced bandwidth because Internet providers will give priority to their own content. Making all the competitors have a worse connection quality. Some people say that Comcast had partnered with Netflix to distribute content on their own video platforms. Giving abilities like using the controller to use voice commands and look up things on Netflix.
Sometimes people don't know what is happening with the country and its laws, such like Orin Kerr, who was not informed about this topic: “I’ve remained rationally ignorant over the debate on net neutrality, as it’s not in my academic field. But with net neutrality being in the news a lot recently, I took to Twitter to ask if there were any good explainers or debates on the topic that gave both sides of the argument and could help me understand the competing perspectives” (Kerr). But Kerr, decided to go deeper into this topic and he started investigating more. Other Twitter users started telling him about a debate that happened in 2017 between Tim Wu (Professor of Law at Columbia Law School) and Chris Yoo (Professor of Law and Director of the Technology and Entertainment Law Program at the Vanderbilt University Law School). Both of them have already talked about net neutrality. Tim Wu wrote ‘Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination’ (2003). And Chris Yoo wrote ‘Beyond Network Neutrality’ (2005), for mentioning one of their books.
The last years the debate of net neutrality has been controversial. A lot of point of views. A lot of perspectives over the same topic. “Although the details of specific proposals differ, as a general matter, a network neutrality mandate would prohibit network owners from discriminating against particular applications and content providers” (Yoo). As we’ve said so far, net neutrality is about not discriminating any service online. Talking about solidarity between big and small companies. In his second paragraph he writes about something really important. “I am not convinced that deviations from network neutrality will necessarily harm consumers and innovation. On the contrary, competition and innovation might be better served if policymakers embraced a 'network diversity' principle that would allow different network owners to pursue different approaches to routing traffic” (Yoo). That basically means what we were saying. Without net neutrality different Internet providers have a simple way to bring more people to their service; using the monopoly they have by giving more speed just because they’re the biggest company giving this service. That will make small Internet providers stay behind. But on the other side. If net neutrality is accepted, they will need to find different ways to reach people because the monopoly doesn’t exist anymore. Now, all Internet providers have the same opportunity of getting clients. But also, without net neutrality, online services can invest on better servers and more hosts where to leave the information per zone. Having net neutrality or not is a big deal, but is not something we can’t go over. It depends on all online services and on Internet providers (Yoo).
“Network neutrality is a useful way of talking about discrimination policies, on networks or otherwise” (Wu). “Whether it comes to employment, networks, or just about anything else, no one really believes in systems that ban discrimination completely”. Net neutrality is a topic that either you’re in or you are out. There is an answer to both sides. If you’re in, you can get over it. If you’re out, you can also get over it easily.
Kerr asked his teacher, Gus Hurwitz (Associate Professor of Law and Co-Director of Space, Cyber, and Telecom Law Program) to analyze Yoo and Wu debate. Hurwitz, sent Kerr and email saying “‘Net neutrality’ refers generally to the idea that ISPs should not treat traffic traversing their networks differently based on its source, content, use, etc. That is, they should be passive conduits that treat all data the same. We’ve been debating whether the FCC should require such neutrality for the past 15 years – and this debate is actually an Internet-era extension of debates that extend back at least to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation of the historic AT&T monopoly” (Hurwitz).
As we can read this topic still is unsolved. You can agree and also disagree. There’s going to be a way to go over it and continue as normal. The only thing that will change here is… Would you let small online learning platforms and different online service providers grow? Or you are going to stay with the same providers and the same platforms only because that’s the easiest path?
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