* The 2014-2015 senior student signature series features area senior class students – and their own “signature” outlooks on a topic of their choice. A new outlook will be posted on Cross-Counties Connect each Friday. The series opens with point of view comments by seniors from Mountain Lake Public High School. The opinions can be found by clicking on the Family & Faith link on the website’s header, and scrolling down to, and clicking on, Outlook. Their teachers are Brenda Feil, Kim Syverson and Debby Jass.
Freedom of the Internet
Imagine opening a web browser to watch a video on the internet only to encounter long, drawn-out loading times and a reduced-quality end result. Some are accustomed to these minor grievances, but others would certainly find them irksome. Now picture attempting to visit the same website and discovering that it has been entirely blocked by an Internet Service Provider (ISP), a company that provides internet lines to end users, for the sole reason that the website hosts videos. For a final mental exercise, conjure up an image of a price tier-based internet system that grants access to only a few specific websites and widens the range of websites as prices increase, only including the wanted video site at the top-level “full internet access” tier. All of these scenarios can and most likely will happen soon if the government does not pass laws upholding net neutrality.
Net neutrality’s roots reach far before the internet was born, all the way back to the Communications Act of 1934 and its introduction of the phrase “common carrier.” Originally intended for telephone and telegraph companies, the title “common carrier” designated information exchange services as public utilities. Because of the designation, those services could no longer discriminate among customers: Barring long-distance communications, they had to treat any phone call or telegraph message like any other, just as a water company would treat a gallon as a gallon no matter who received it. This system worked well for decades until the internet came along. In 1996, the 1934 law expanded its scope to accommodate the spreading use of the new technology, but did not classify Internet Service Providers as common carriers, despite ISPs fitting in perfectly with the law’s definition. All was well until a 2013 court case validated the right of ISPs to limit access of specific websites to specific people.
ISPs stand firmly against net neutrality; in fact, a few of them have already taken steps away from it and started limiting connection speeds. Netflix, a popular website that allows users to stream movies and TV shows, has released data showing that a few ISPs, such as Verizon and Comcast, clearly reduced their users’ average connection speeds significantly in the first few months of 2014. As Netflix is based entirely on video, which is bandwidth-heavy, it was a logical first target for throttling by ISPs. In addition, Google has added several pages to YouTube for users experiencing unusually poor-quality connections, explaining why and implying the ISPs are at fault. In the eyes of ISPs, doing away with net neutrality could potentially greatly increase their profits from customers paying extra for a larger selection of websites. Additionally, they could start charging websites for so-called “fast lane” services for better connections to users.
On the other hand are advocates for net neutrality. The attitude of this side is represented well by this quote from Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web: “(Web technology) must not discriminate against particular hardware, software, underlying network, language, culture, disability, or against particular types of data.” Supporters of this side state that the “fast lane” idea is a twisting of words since everything else would be placed in a slow lane, causing paying websites to seem faster by comparison. Small businesses without the funds to pay for fast lanes for their websites would be at a disadvantage; another argument for net neutrality is that allowing ISPs to choose which websites users can access is equivalent to censorship. Recently, the United Kingdom passed a law specifically giving these powers to ISPs, causing a largely negative public reaction.
In summary, net neutrality is an ongoing issue, and one that will affect everyone who uses the internet. If the idea of net neutrality is abandoned, the state of the internet will regress rather than progress. The future of the internet is in our hands at this moment. We must do what we can; two simple ways of getting started are calling our members of Congress and filing a comment with the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), the government body that has control over these matters. Help keep the internet as it should be: open and free.