The internet is something most everyone in the first world uses on a daily basis, some where their livelihoods depend on it. The internet in America is provided, created and updated by two distinct groups, with another group overseeing and regulating the entire cyberspace. Internet Service Providers and websites comprise the private sector aspect of the internet, creating content and allowing access, while the government regulates many aspects such as taxing, shutting down illegal sites and ensuring all legal webpages are granted access. This last trait is called Net Neutrality, the rule that “all internet service providers must allow equal access to apps and content, regardless of the source” (Fortune). This rule was first established by the Obama Administration, but recently the Federal Communications Commission, the main government body that regulates the internet, has announced its plans to rescind the rule. This has led to people taking sides, but this time it is not as clear as Democrats vs. Republicans, or libertarians vs. authoritarians. Each side still has their arguments and thus communication strategies, but it is not as simple as party loyalty or what each side sees as the best solution for the country.
First, the landscape must be understood. In order for people to have access to the internet, they must have an Internet Service Provider (ISP). ISPs vary from state to state, but Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Cox, and Century Link are some of the most used ISPs. These
The second video “Moyers & Company: Is Net Neutrality Dead?” is about a debate regarding net neutrality, which is the right to communicate freely online, keeping the major internet service providers like Verizon and Comcast from increasing costs for costumers to not slow down or block any content they want to use, also called price discrimination, a service offered at different prices by the same provider in different markets. As there are only few internet providers, barriers are set by limiting the area where some of them are allowed to supply their services to, limiting competition and increasing costs for consumers.
The internet is a resource with ever expanding content and applications for everyone to use however, net neutrality rules on the free use of internet remains a debated topic. The “Point/Counterpoint: Network Neutrality Nuances” presents Barbara van Schewick’s supportive argument on the applications of net neutrality rules, and the consequences of failing to do so. Schewick’s engaging justifications are well researched with arguments containing significant amounts of examples, strong and simplistic diction to reach her audience, and clean and smooth transitions to move between ideas.
It is often regarded as the notion that, the broadband service provider should charge customers only for Internet access without any form of discrimination or favoritism on content viewed by end-users from their respective content providers. The concept of “Net Neutrality” is intended to regulate price and promote competition. Simply put, it is a premised on the principle that all Internet traffic must be treated equally without bias. “Opponents of the Net neutrality on the other hand, see bandwidth as a private resource, one that is supplied most efficiently if exclusive owners take responsibility for managing and conserving it, and are able to optimize its value by exerting control over the content and application it conveys” (Yoo,
In the article, “Net neutrality hits a nerve, eliciting intense reactions”, Cecilia Kang discusses how the pending repeal of Net Neutrality by the FCC and Chairman, Ajit Pai, is adamantly contested by most of the Internet community and most companies, big or small. To develop her argument, Kang uses a wide variety of appeals from established and startup companies, statistics and evidence related to the reaction to the repeal, and demonstrations on how polarizing the issue is, and the repeal’s effect on solving the problem of Internet regulation. Kang cites a multitude of Internet-based companies or organizations, such as Mozilla, Google, Netflix, and Free Press, to demonstrate their concern and clarify their resentment of the repeal. For instance, Google and Netflix argued that “telecom companies should not be able to split sites because that would allow them to become a sort of gatekeeper.” These responses better clarify companies’ concerns about the repeal and its effect on their business, while also aiding Kang in developing her article on explaining the concern and the response it has elicited. According to Kang,
the August of 2005, the F.C.C. adopted a very important policy statement regarding net neutrality. This policy statement protects several things that are essential to anyone who frequently uses the Internet. It gives consumers the freedom to access any content and to use any application within the law. In early December, 2017, the F.C.C. voted to repeal it. However, just over half of the US states have made attempts to pass legislation that reinforces net neutrality. Net Neutrality protects American “internet freedom”, ensuring that the people can make full use of the internet and prevents Internet Service Providers from having too much control.
Consequently ISPs could also treat internet like a cable subscription, charging for access to sites or online services such as facebook,
Throughout the last decade, the idea of Net Neutrality has been the topic of many debates. Net Neutrality is the idea that Internet service providers should not be allowed to block their users from any content regardless of its source. The Debate is still continuing in 2017 with the F.C.C planning to repeal Net Neutrality and allow internet providers to completely regulate what their users can see and charge the users extra for “luxuries” such as social media, messaging, email, and music. There are two sides of this argument, one side believes that Net Neutrality should be taken away, while others believe that it is unfair for the Internet providers to have the right to take away the access to any content. Internet providers should not be allowed to control what content one can view when surfing the internet.
Since the invention of the Internet, there has been an idea among the creators that information that was transmitted, would be treated fairly and equally. In the United States (U.S.), the debate goes on for Internet communications services that “must remain open for commerce, innovation, speech, consumers, innovations by application developers, content companies, expansion, and investment by broadband developers” (Friedlander 924). Since the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) 2015 Open Internet Order, net neutrality has come under multiple threats and is in more danger than ever. Without net neutrality, Internet service providers (ISP’s) may continue to discriminate against specific online services or websites. This paper first describes the net neutrality background, then the potential impacts on education and minority communities, and finally the most recent debates
I am Aric See and I am a senior in the Weidner School of Inquiry at Plymouth High School in Plymouth Indiana. Net Neutrality is a very important issue facing the United States, with many Republican members of Congress opposing the FCC’s Open Internet Order and the reclassifying of broadband to Telecommunication Services from Information Services. The members of the GOP who are completely against the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) reclassification, and attempts to keep the internet free, give many reasons that are simply not true, such as the FCC’s regulations will destroy the free nature of the internet. Because of the attempts by Congressmen with the GOP to fight the regulations, many Americans, especially small business owners that use the web as a base, feel that their equality and freedoms on the internet will be
The World Wide Web was first created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, under the philosophy that it would begin as, and remain, an “open and free” platform of expression. It was believed that a neutral [open] web could promote innovation and development of technologies in an environment where individuals’ speech and collaboration overpowered large corporations. Recently, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have jeopardized the open nature of the web by opposing net neutrality, the idea that “all data on the internet should be treated equally by corporations, such as internet service providers, and governments, regardless of content, user, platform, application or device.”
Tim Berners-Lee said “Freedom of connection with any application to any party is the fundamental social basis of the internet. And now, is the basis of the society built on the internet.” Net Neutrality has been around since the beginning of internet. It is the reason the internet is open and free for anyone to use without, blocking, degradation, and discrimination. It has been the main driving force for up and coming artists, new small businesses, and people with fresh and great ideas. It has made the internet effortless and accessible without charging outrageous fees for a faster lane or having to ask for permission to use visuals, video, or audio. It
The emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web brought upon a medium of communication with a range of opportunities for the world. However, this medium is, in due course, subject to the control of a few major companies. The enigma of information flow is the central concern of net neutrality. Consumers, competition and network owners would benefit directly from the regulation of network neutrality because it would provide a positive impact to those parties as well as provide equality.
Yet at the same time, these two sets of companies compete for customers, creating a glaring conflict of interest. Whilst these issues seemed to be resolved by the middle of the twentieth century, the advent of the internet introduced a whole new set of problems. The term net neutrality, first coined by Tim Wu, Professor of the Columbia University Law School in 2003, came to represent a question that had long been perceived as being of relatively little concern – is unfettered access to the internet a right, or a privilege? (Cheng and Bandyopadhay 2011: 60) (Greenstein 2007: 61, 85) The debate around internet regulation and net neutrality first gained traction in 2002, when the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) controversially ruled that broadband internet was to be classed as an information service rather as a telecommunications service, and thus made it exempt from a considerable range of content and conduct regulations that it would otherwise have been subject to. For those Americans, as exemplified by organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who saw the internet as a space of uninhibited free expression that needed to be protected from the influence of corporate meddling, this decision was very frustrating. As promoted by Wu and others, net neutrality came to represent the belief that ‘internet data packets should move nondiscriminatorily’ – that is, the data (‘packets’ essentially being a technical
There are multiple ways to communicate using the internet. Communication is when someone is physically doing something to talk to another person. Communication includes talking, touching, screaming, texting, and many other ways through digital or person. The internet is a computer networking system that connects smaller networks and computers worldwide. That is why it is called the “World Wide Web”. The World Wide Web is an information system that lets a person share data electronically. The information highway was designed so that people could send messages and share data. The internet links a person to anyone who has access to the internet. The World Wide Web allows people to talk to strangers and that is when many of the problems can come in affect. When a person is talking to a complete stranger over the internet, it can involve “Catfishing” which is when a person is using another person’s identity for their profile. The online network can help a stranger steal a person’s identity and any background information about that person even if that information is private. There have been incidents where people have lost everything that they have because a stranger stole their identity and their personal information. People have gone through major depression and anxiety because someone over the World Wide Web has bullied them or threatened them. People have tried to commit suicide in multiple ways because someone would not stop harming them emotionally. There are people who are dying, harming themselves, losing everything that they love because someone is using the internet and communicating through it in a bad way. The negative sides of the internet are cybercrime, which is the act of doing a crime through the internet. Cyberterrorism is a political attack against important information. Cyberstalking is when a person repeatedly sends another person threatening remarks to try to harass them and
The effects of the internet on me and this society have been rapidly changing. Did you know that approximately 3.2 billion people use the internet, about 200 billion emails and 3 million google searches would have to wait if the internet was turned off for one day. Let me tell you about something that happened when i was little, it might be off topic a little but when i was little i was born backwards, meaning i came out legs first. My hips were out of place and until i was about 2. My dad is always on the internet and loved taking pictures of his “Little princess”, the pictures can still be found on facebook along with a lot of other things from my family memories. That was when i started wanting to get on the internet, i asked for a facebook and they said no, being a rebel i made one anyways just to play the games on it. The internet can have positive and negative things about it for younger and older people, for example the internet engines are one of the best information givers out there, they bring almost everything and anything to a lot of internet users that lange from all over the world. The internet can provide ways to communicate with family and friends from a long distance, and even meet new people. Bad things about it is people sharing and storing illegal information on the internet, much like the dark web. The addiction to the internet and the online network can be disturbing a person's way of living and professional activity.