There's no ifs-ans-or butts about it, Net Neutrality is a huge issue that changes weekly. For my English 2 class, I wrote this paper as the first of two major Research Papers due over the Semester. Honestly, it was probably the most fun research paper I've ever done.
Why? Mainly because I didn't honestly know that much about Net Neutrality and I've found that most people don't. Over the course of the research, I found many amazing websites that broke it down in amazing ways. I found writing this paper the most informative thing I've ever done about any form of issue. I hope you enjoy it!
Net Neutrality is something that has been in the news far
too frequently in recent weeks, months, and years. It seems the issue will not go away, even
though poll after poll show most citizens of the U.S. want Net Neutrality. Without much thought on the subject, having
seen some news broadcasts, I knew exactly where I stood. I was firmly on the side of Net Neutrality. But then something happened….
While eating in ‘The Caf,’ as students at NSU
affectionately call the on campus cafeteria, there was an event going on, and
there were far more people on campus than usual. It was honestly a madhouse. It was hard to move around, it was hard to
find a seat, but most of all, I could not get on the internet. There were so many people trying to connect,
that it was apparent that the Wi-Fi server was overloaded. Overall, it was a minor issue, but I
overheard someone say, “If we didn’t have Net Neutrality, this wouldn’t be
happening.”
Overall, the NSU campus is very well equipped for its
students to get internet access. There
are almost always open computers in the Library and every building on campus
seems equipped with great Wi-Fi servers.
With the exception of large events in the University Center, the
Internet is easily accessed. Yet,
walking through the Library, after that day, I could not help but notice how
many people use the library computers to play games.
Netflix accounts for 35 percent of the internet traffic
in North America (Williams) . That is a huge number when you think about
the vastness of the entire internet. Of
course, streaming full HD video online would take up quite a bit of space, but
what effect does that have on the overall speed of internet for the average
user? What effect would it have if a
high percentage of people on campus decided to watch some Netflix all at once,
to the campus at large?
This is precisely the ‘valid’ part of the argument made
by most Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
Netflix could pay a certain fee and the ISPs would allow Netflix to
stream faster into your home. Using the
fees collected, ISPs would then be able to use the capital to upgrade the lines
so that the rest of the Internet was not affected. In all honesty, it sounds like a great idea.
The problem is ISPs would have the power to charge
Netflix a fee just to stay at its current speed. If they refused to pay it, Netflix would then
be slowed down and be unusable for the average user, which could easily shut
down the company. If Netflix did pay it,
then the company might have to raise its own fees, which might push away its
own customers.
Senator Al Franken made a similar case in his speech that
turned the Net Neutrality issue into an issue of Free Speech:
Before
YouTube, there was Google TV. Google TV wasn’t that great, so some guys started
YouTube over a pizzeria in San Mateo, California. YouTube was better than
Google TV, and because both traveled at the same speed to the viewer, people
were able to make a choice between the two.
YouTube won out, and Google ended up buying YouTube for a lot of money,
and everyone has benefited. Now, Net neutrality is under threat as it never has
been. (Franken)
The fight over Net Neutrality is almost as insane as the
conjectured arguments people come up with.
On June 19, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the
Communications Act of 1934. It created
the FCC to regulate telecommunication utilities, such as phone lines and cable
companies (Federal Communications Act) . Sixty-two years
later, Congress overhauled the Act with the Telecommunications Act of
1996. Somewhere, under all the political
and technical jargon contained within these sets of laws, was the term
‘utilities.’ Yet nowhere did it label
the Internet one (Federal Communications Commision) .
Because of this, the FCC could not truly regulate ISPs,
which were mainly controlled by the telephone companies, which used the government
regulated telephone lines to bring the Internet to people’s home. The cable companies realized they could bring
in the internet faster, and they did. So
then a company wanted to bring Internet to the masses and use the cable lines,
but they could not do so, because under the FCC rules, the cable lines belonged
to the cable companies, thus making them private property, not public. In 2002 the FCC made this decision to treat
DSL internet access (what the telephone companies use) and cable internet
access different which truly sparked the battle. Just a handful of months later Law Professor
Time Wu coined the term “Net Neutrality” in a law review article (A Timeline of
Net Neutrality) .
The FCC decision went all the way to the supreme court in
2005, and after that, a clear line was dawn in the sand when AT&T CEO
Edward Whitacre said, “Anybody who expects to use pipes for free is nuts!” By saying that line he was stating the fact
that ISPs want money from every website who want to reach their customers
through said ISPs. Then companies
started to really overstep Net Neutrality in a big way (A Timeline of
Net Neutrality) .
In 2007 Comcast blocked BitTorrent from its servers. Though they denied it, it obviously happened
and the legal battle began. Complaints
were filed with the FCC and the FCC ordered Comcast to stop. Comcast appealed the decision and the D.C.
Circuit court rejected the FCC’s use of part of the Telecommunications Acts to
regulate Comcast. Then, in 2011, the FCC
issued the Open Internet Order, which was promptly challenged by Verizon. In January of 2014 the D.C. Circuit court
overturned the order in favor of Verizon (A Timeline of Net Neutrality) .
Finally, the FCC caved.
On May 13, 2014, the FCC released a proposal that would have allowed for
fast and slow lanes through ISPs. Two
months later the FCC received 1.1 Million comments, with less than 1% opposed
to Net Neutrality. With Obama weighing
in on the issue, supporting the Open Internet/Net Neutrality way of thinking,
along with another 3.7 Million comments crashing the FCC servers, the FCC
passed rules (A Timeline of Net Neutrality) . As of February of 2015, all ISPs, both wired
and wireless, are classified as ‘utilities’ (Chappell) .
Honestly, this battle is far from over, but the
intricacies of it are astounding. From
Free Speech to politics, this issue has everyone talking. Any politician that comes out against Net
Neutrality promptly has an article listing the campaign contributions from many
ISPs, thus undermining their integrity.
Why is this such a hotbed issue though? Simply because of one thing: When compared to other parts of the world,
internet in the U.S. is slow and expensive.
The big companies that control the ISPs also control cable and telephone
lines that are in direct competition with some of the services you can easily
get with an internet connection.
Therefore, they have no want to invest money into their ISP divisions to
make our internet better. They, of
course, say that without Net Neutrality there would be more competition, which
would drive prices down and advance technology forward.
There is no way to look at this issue without
contemplating corporate greed as people hold back progress in order to make
sure the big wigs continue to profit off everyone they can. The Internet is an open source of amazing
information. To sit inside the John
Vaughan Library and watch students read articles related to any topic then want
to research, from all over the world, should fill any academic with some sense
of pride to live in such an age. If ISPs
had control over the speed of things, there is an honest fear that videos used
in class could be slowed down because of the website they are associated
with. Learning, in and of itself, could
take a huge step backwards. Libraries could
be completely hamstrung, as articles online would cease to be available unless
the college paid extra access to make sure they could be piped through.
Net Neutrality truly does simply boil down to
freedom. The freedom to watch Netflix,
be it on a tablet using Wi-Fi in a dorm, or on a computer in the library,
exists and will hopefully continue to exist.
Without that freedom many of the things we take for granted about the
Internet would drastically change. The
battle for Net Neutrality will go ever onward, so do not take internet freedoms
lightly.
As of a couple of years ago, Susan Crawford reported for
Wired, that “Approximately 19 million Americans can’t subscribe
to high-speed internet access because they live in areas that private companies
believe are too expensive to serve. Internet access is still very expensive compared to the rest of the
developed world – a third of Americans don’t or can’t
subscribe.” She goes on to state her embarrassment at the
current state of the high-speed internet access and what it could be,
considering how innovative our nation is.
Our entire
culture seems to be based around internet access these days, internet memes are
referenced in everyday life. What will
it mean for our culture if we cannot advance our internet and give access to it
as freely as we did the radio and television?
Verizon and AT&T have refused subsidies from the FCC to help expand
the internet to more rural areas because they are worried about the regulations
that come with the money, and they are at the front of the fight against Net
Neutrality (Crawford) .
Works Cited
- "A Timeline of Net Neutrality." n.d. whatisnetneutrality.org. Web. 22 March 2015.
- Ammori, Marvin. "The Case for Net Neutrality." Foreign Affairs Jul/Aug 2014: 62-73. Article.
- Brodkin, Jon. "FCC Votes for net neutrality, a ban on paid fast lanes, and Title II." 26 February 2015. Ars Technica. Web. 7 March 2015.
- —. "Republicans' "Internet Freedom Act" would wipe out net neutrality." 5 March 2015. Ars Technica. Web. 7 March 2015.
- Chappell, Bill. "FCC Approves Net Neutrality Rules for 'Open Internet'." 26 February 2015. NPR. Web. 26 February 2015.
- Cook, Vickie S. "Net Neutrality: What Is It and Why Should Educators Care?" Delta Kappa Gamma Bulleton Summer 2014: 46-49. Article.
- Crawford, Susan. "It's Time to Fix the Pitifully Slow, Expensive Internet Access in the U.S." 13 December 2012. Wired. Web. 22 March 2015.
- Federal Communications Act. 73rd United States Congress. 19 June 1934. Act.
- Federal Communications Commision. "Telecommunications Act of 1996." 31 May 2011. Federal Communications Commison. Web. 27 February 2015.
- Franken, Al. "Net Neutrality: The Free Speech Issue of Our Time." 7 May 2014. Speech.
- Hendrickson, Mark. "The Sad Reality of Net Neutrality." 27 February 2015. Forbes. Web. 27 February 2015.
- In the Matter of Preserving the Open Internet Broadband Industries Practices. No. FCC 10-201. Federal Communications Commission. 21 December 2010. Report and Order.
- Macri, Giuseppe. "Verizon's Mocking Response to the FCC's Net Neutrality Vote is Perfect." 26 February 2015. The Daily Caller. Web. 28 February 2015.
- Mike Snider, Roger Yu, and Emily Brown. "What is Net Neutrality and What Does it Mean for Me?" 27 February 2015. USA Today. Web. 27 February 2015.
- Miniwatts Marketing Group. "Internet Usage Statistics." 30 June 2014. Internet World Stats. Web. 22 March 2015.
- Nagesh, Gautham and Amol Sharma. "Court Tosses Rules of Road for Internet." 14 January 2014. The Wall Street Journal. Web. 7 March 2015.
- National Cable & Telecommunications Association, et al., Petitioners v. Brand X Internet Services et al. and Federal Communications Commission and United States, Petitioners v. Brand X Ineternet Services et al. No. 04-277 and 04-281. Supreme Court of the United States. 27 June 2005. Case.
- White, Sara. "Net Neutrality and Libraries: Conflicts of Access." Serials Librarian September 2014: 151-157. Article.
- Williams, Owen. "Netflix now accounts for 35 percent of overall US internet traffic." 21 November 2014. TNW. Web. 25 March 2015.
