Net Neutrality
“Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service
providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not
discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application,
type of attached equipment, and modes of communication.” (Wikipedia)
Net Neutrality is a concept that means that the sites you
have access to when you open up your internet browser can not be limited/blocked/slowed
by either your internet provider or the government. With net neutrality, you can look at whatever
sites you want, you can watch your shows without having your internet provider
slow the site so badly that it’s unusable, you can read that controversial
article that your internet provider may not like, you can start your own
business without having to worry about already-in-place businesses selling you
out of search engine space, etc. You
have the freedom to use the internet as the free and open medium that it is
intended to be. As designers in today’s
digital world, we thrive on being able to be noticed even if we’re not a big
name, we thrive on the freedom to make our own website and show what we want, and
for a living we depend on people who need the same. However, recently a ruling was made that made
that threatens net neutrality.
On January 14, just a couple weeks ago, the DC Circuit Court
of Appeals overturned two parts of the FCC net neutrality rules. According to Slate the parts over turned are,
“one that prevented discrimination in favor of or against websites, and one
against outright blocking.” What does this mean for us? Your internet provider It could be a competitor or anything else
that they want to block. They can force
businesses such as Netflix to pay to be shown on people’s internet (and guess
what, your Netflix subscription will become more expensive). As the Slate article continues, they are
still required to tell you if they’re blocking something (but since choices are
often limited, you can’t really just up and go to a different provider).
can now prevent
you from seeing sites that they don’t want you to see.
Things aren’t completely without hope. As the PCWorld
article states, lawmakers have introduced a bill to restore the rules until the
time that the Federal Communications Commission can make a new move in regards
to net neutrality (though it has to make it through Congress first). And it is an easy save too. The FCC just needs to reclassify the internet
as a telecommunications service instead of as information services and then
their rules can’t be overturned by the Courts in the way that there were in the
January 14th ruling. The
internet will stay the open medium it is today, and the net neutrality battle
will live to fight another day.
Cited Sources:
Image Source:
http://nhlife.wordpress.com/2014/01/17/i-fully-appreciate-that-net-neutrality-is-very-un-american-but-obama-if-he-has-any-kahunas-left-should-make-it-his-legacy/
(A bit of an interesting and short read too, though I would argue that it's not un-American, and that a free and open unblocked market is VERY American)
(A bit of an interesting and short read too, though I would argue that it's not un-American, and that a free and open unblocked market is VERY American)
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