Net Neutrality

What is Net Neutrality? In a nutshell, it is about choice. Who controls what you can see and use on the internet? You do right now, you can open up your browser and choose what search engine you want to use, whether its Google, Yahoo or Bing you have the freedom. But what if one day you  tried to use Google's search engine and it was so painfully slow that you could not even use it or worse yet, Google would completely be restricted to use, forcing you to use another search engine instead.?

Without Net Neutrality that scenario would most likely happen. Your internet service provider(ISP) would degrade your access or block certain websites such as Google. They will do this  mainly because a contract agreement with another search engine company or perhaps your ISP will  have their own search engine. It would only make sense for them to degrade or block other search engines to bring more business to theirs.

Here is another scenario, lets say one day your current phone service appears to performing horribly. The signal is seems to be weak and calls are filled with static. Then a few months later your ISP starts to offer their own phone service. The question now is, was your phone service really that bad or did your ISP have something to do with it?

Voice calls are only one of the applications that run over the internet. ISP are now getting into the video content business, so they will be competing with other companies such as Youtube now. If your ISP has a financial interest in a certain video provider, then you ISP will have the incentive to degrade your access to any other video content provider.

Scenarios like these are not only possible but has already happened and will continue to happen if Net Neutrality is not enforced. The internet is a huge and open place and should be kept free.











http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=1234951