On Net Neutrality
I’m sorry I’ve been offline so much but I feel that I need to share this rant here. Keep in mind that this is mostly copied off of one of my Facebook posts so it might be badly edited in parts.
I was literally trying to explain net neutrality to a guy last night. He said both sides had valid arguments but no repealing net neutrality isn't good for anyone but service providers and their backers. And aside from the whole micro-transactions and subscription based access to websites, service providers would literally be able to legally control any web traffic that passes through their domains.
Think of it this way: imagine the roads in a city are network routes and intersections are routers. Every building is a local network, such as a server block or home network. Your car is a piece of information travelling through the web. With this piece of legislature, companies are now able to place police at every intersection to say who's car can go through and who's car can't. They can outright deny you your route and send you back home, or even just take you out of your car and arrest you. At every intersection. And they don't even have to explain why apart from the terms of service agreement that nobody reads.
The free flow of information provided by the Internet would come to a grinding halt and virtually all information would be controlled by private companies, who would then have the power to directly control what we know and think by changing everything we see on a daily basis.
And if you believe that the FCC and its financial backers wouldn't do this, then please take a moment to think about how hard service providers have been pushing to remove this law. After years of private industries lobbying to repeal net neutrality do you really think they've put all of this effort into deregulation without the intent to abuse their new freedoms? There is no doubt in my mind that everyone who sees an opportunity will leap at the chance to charge people even more for internet access, and regardless of the amount paid they will restrict and manipulate the flow of data.
Think back to that comparison I made earlier. If you had to pay more so that your connection would be faster, you would basically be bribing every cop you pass so they would let you speed through every intersection. Meanwhile everyone who can't afford the bribe is left stuck at the intersection because they couldn't afford the "streamlined legal system" package or whatever.
Service providers would be able to see that you’re trying to access things that they don’t like, and would be able to legally stop your traffic from reaching your computer or even the server you’re trying to connect to.
The absolute best case scenarios that I can think of are as follows:
the Internet Service Providers are telling the truth and won’t actually halt or slow traffic based on payments, but this is extremely unlikely.
the Internet Service Providers do take control of information, but due to public outrage and backlash net neutrality gets rewritten
Those are the scenarios that I hope happen, however it’s not very likely that either will be the case. Much more likely are the worse case scenarios. Not the worst, but the absolute worst case scenarios are of course probably paranoia and anxiety talking, and I would rather not encourage panic. Some worse scenarios are as follows:
online freedom of speech is essentially nonexistent and corporations can disconnect people and servers from the Internet at will
prices for Internet access become so high that usage drops dramatically
reduced freedom online discourages people from using the Internet, leading to less people using it, then less people maintaining it, then eventually it’s replaced by an entirely new system
(possibly worst of all) people don’t fight the change and let it happen, the ISPs get away with whatever they want, we as individuals no longer have any voice or control online
Regardless of the outcome we all need to speak up and fight for our freedom. This is an issue that affects people around the world, not just in the United States. If you truly believe that we deserve the freedoms of speech and accessing the information that we seek online, then please educate yourself on this topic, and do your part to fight back against this effort by the FCC and Internet Service Providers.
