Greetings and Salutations! Ever since the new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai called to vote the national policy of net neutrality, the denizens of the internet have been in uproar. Many of our not-so-internet-savvy MVLers probably don't know why this is so dangerous and unacceptable, so I've decided to inform you about the issue, ironically, through the freedom of the internet, the same thing they are trying to take away.
The FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, will vote on December 14th whether to keep net neutrality in place or to repeal it. Why is this so important? Net neutrality is to the internet what the 1st Amendment is to the Constitution. Net neutrality allows you to voice your opinion in the internet without the ISPs, Internet Service Providers, who deliver your opinion to the consumers, change what you say or block people from viewing it. In short, without net neutrality ISPs can and will block any content with which they disagree. For example, if an ISP is pro-abortion and pro-evolution, they could block any articles or websites that contain any pro-life or pro-creationism content. Or if it's anti-Christian, they could block Bible Gateway, wels.org, or even this blog. You can imagine how powerful this will make ISPs, especially in a world where millions of Americans lack any sort of real competitive options for internet assess, since large companies will be able to filter out any news or media that they don't agree with, an extremely dangerous power, since the internet being one of the largest news sources for our country.
Another big problem presented by a lack of net neutrality is something called Server-Price-Splicing (Not what it's actually called, but hey, it sounds cool). The current regulations of net neutrality makes ISPs treat the internet as "The Internet", and not as a collection of servers that they can allow and not allow access to separately. This means that if they provide you access to the internet, they must give you access to the entire internet, and can't charge you for separate websites or media, or make one site faster then another. For instance, Verizon can't make Netflix videos load faster then Youtube ones for their customers. They also cannot block Youtube. This is because the FCC can currently regulate ISP actions, thanks to the Title II of the Communications Act of 1934.
"It shall be unlawful for any common carrier to make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities or services for or in connection with like communication service, directly or indirectly, by any means or device, or to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, class of persons or locality, or to subject any particular person, class of persons or locality to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage."
Essentially what the act says is that any telecommunication service cannot discriminate or show favor to any of their customers, neither the consumers nor the makers of the content, such as internet writers or video-makers.
The FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, will vote on December 14th whether to keep net neutrality in place or to repeal it. Why is this so important? Net neutrality is to the internet what the 1st Amendment is to the Constitution. Net neutrality allows you to voice your opinion in the internet without the ISPs, Internet Service Providers, who deliver your opinion to the consumers, change what you say or block people from viewing it. In short, without net neutrality ISPs can and will block any content with which they disagree. For example, if an ISP is pro-abortion and pro-evolution, they could block any articles or websites that contain any pro-life or pro-creationism content. Or if it's anti-Christian, they could block Bible Gateway, wels.org, or even this blog. You can imagine how powerful this will make ISPs, especially in a world where millions of Americans lack any sort of real competitive options for internet assess, since large companies will be able to filter out any news or media that they don't agree with, an extremely dangerous power, since the internet being one of the largest news sources for our country.
Another big problem presented by a lack of net neutrality is something called Server-Price-Splicing (Not what it's actually called, but hey, it sounds cool). The current regulations of net neutrality makes ISPs treat the internet as "The Internet", and not as a collection of servers that they can allow and not allow access to separately. This means that if they provide you access to the internet, they must give you access to the entire internet, and can't charge you for separate websites or media, or make one site faster then another. For instance, Verizon can't make Netflix videos load faster then Youtube ones for their customers. They also cannot block Youtube. This is because the FCC can currently regulate ISP actions, thanks to the Title II of the Communications Act of 1934.
"It shall be unlawful for any common carrier to make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities or services for or in connection with like communication service, directly or indirectly, by any means or device, or to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, class of persons or locality, or to subject any particular person, class of persons or locality to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage."
Essentially what the act says is that any telecommunication service cannot discriminate or show favor to any of their customers, neither the consumers nor the makers of the content, such as internet writers or video-makers.
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| Here is an illustration of what internet prices might look like with no net neutrality, taken from an actual Internet Provider in Portugal, where they have no net neutrality except those mandated by the EU. Other countries that have no net neutrality include Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, France,Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, South Korea, and Slovenia |
Of course, you might think that these ISPs would never do such a thing. In fact, they are currently making promises that they will continue their services the same as ever. (This is, of course, while they are still funding and supporting a repeal on net neutrality.) For reference, here is a list of multiple companies over the years who have violated net neutrality, and keep in mind, this is just a few instances.
MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked the voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage. Vonage filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. The FCC stepped in to sanction Madison River and prevent further blocking, but it lacks the authority to stop this kind of abuse today.
COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network. Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its customers.
TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites.
AT&T: From 2007–2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services on the iPhone. The wireless provider wanted to prevent iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on such “over-the-top” voice services. The Google Voice app received similar treatment from carriers like AT&T when it came on the scene in 2009.
WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream’s own search portal and results.
MetroPCS: In 2011, MetroPCS, at the time one of the top-five U.S. wireless carriers, announced plans to block streaming video over its 4G network from all sources except YouTube. MetroPCS then threw its weight behind Verizon’s court challenge against the FCC’s 2010 open internet ruling, hoping that rejection of the agency’s authority would allow the company to continue its anti-consumer practices.
AT&T, SPRINT and VERIZON: From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing.
VERIZON: In 2012, the FCC caught Verizon Wireless blocking people from using tethering applications on their phones. Verizon had asked Google to remove 11 free tethering applications from the Android marketplace. These applications allowed users to circumvent Verizon’s $20 tethering fee and turn their smartphones into Wi-Fi hot spots. By blocking those applications, Verizon violated a Net Neutrality pledge it made to the FCC as a condition of the 2008 airwaves auction.
AT&T: In 2012, AT&T announced that it would disable the FaceTime video-calling app on its customers’ iPhones unless they subscribed to a more expensive text-and-voice plan. AT&T had one goal in mind: separating customers from more of their money by blocking alternatives to AT&T’s own products.
(source-https://www.freepress.net)
You may be asking, "Why would the FCC even vote to take away net neutrality if it's so important?" It's mostly due to the people who want it repealed, i.e. large ISP companies, such as AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, CenturyLink, Spectrum, Consolidated Communications, and MediaCom. More interestingly, though, are the large number of big-name companies that are against ending net neutrality. In 2014, when net neutrality was first on the FCC chopping block, put there by the then-chairman Tom Wheeler, 130 high-profile tech companies wrote and signed a letter to the FCC voicing their disapproval of removing it. These companies included Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Reddit, Twitter and Yahoo, as well as smaller companies from Mozilla to BitTorrent. The intervention of these companies and a large public outcry led to Wheeler not only stopping his advance on net neutrality, but strengthening it. On July 12th, 2017, these and even more companies again banded together in a Day of Action against the destruction of net neutrality led by Chairman Pai. Retired FCC Chairman Wheeler has even said this about the new advance by Pai, "this proposal raises hypocrisy to new heights." You can find the rest of what he said here: http://bgr.com/2017/11/22/net-neutrality-explainer-2017/
The ISPs in favor of ending net neutrality do bring to the table a few benefits to there being no net neutrality, however.With no regulation by the FCC, ISPs could decide which data is more important, and slow down or speed up data based on how time-sensitive it is. This would, in theory, maximize the efficiency of internet data delivery. Here's an example. Over 50% of the internet being used at any given time is for streaming video, with 30% being Netflix and 20% being Youtube. With no net neutrality, ISPs could make video streaming more optimized by, say, slowing down all email traffic by 1%. Most email users wouldn't notice the few milliseconds more of delay, since emails are much less time-sensitive then say, a video conference, which would benefit greatly from being a few milliseconds faster.
However, this brings up the question, who decides who gets the faster connections? This is where the arguments of the ISPs break down. Basically, whoever pays the ISPs more money are the websites that will get faster connections. This is like saying that you get one vote in the election of the president for how many million dollars you have. Bill Gates would get 90 thousand votes, whereas the average American adult would get three tenths of one. That means that in order to be able to establish yourself or your site on the internet, you would have to be rich, raise enough money to give to the ISPs, or risk being regulated to a slow data lane. By giving faster connection speeds to already established companies, or blocking competitors, you stop any competition with those companies, which means we will have to pay more for online services, and those services wouldn't improve. That's like making all roads that don't lead to Target have a speed limit of 2 MPH, and destroying any new stores that open in town. This money that would be going to the ISPs from internet creators, however, wouldn't lower out monthly rates. In fact, many experts say that rates would only increase, along with extra fees for optimized streaming and access to fast lanes, or your favorite sites.
TL;DR: Really what the whole issue boils down to is big corporations that are looking to line their pockets by taking away our freedoms. They are influencing the FCC to repeal net neutrality and destroy the free internet, making us pay more for the things we now enjoy, and killing the online competitive market. I encourage all of you to contact your government representatives and tell them to oppose the taking away of net neutrality.
