Before anything, the question that people should ask first is what is Net Neutrality? In one sentence, net neutrality is the standard guiding that protects the free and open Internet. It is the reason the Internet has driven economic improvement, democratic participation and free speech online. With Net neutrality, the network’s job is to move data only so that it protects the consumer’s right to use any application or service without any interference from the network provider. The problem we face today is that the nation’s largest telephone and cable companies such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.
Everyone is connected to each other with the same level field, but those companies want to change all that by locking down parts of the web and make sides paid them more money to use it. Everyone else will get the slow lane. But how they do that? By killing one of the internet's founding principles: NET NEUTRALITY.
You connect the net through pipes own by the telephone and cable companies, but the deal is that they are not allowed to mess with what is inside those pipes, whether it is Google or Yahoo, everyday's citizens or business stuff, everybody’s website gets the same speed internet, and same quality. That is net neutrality. The thing is the cable and phone companies already control the broadband marketplace, so when network owners start abusing their control of the pipes, there will be nowhere else for consumers to turn.
So the debate is that the companies want to tax content providers speedy delivery of their data, but only for their partners and services. Only sides that pay them a huge fee would be allowed to use it making them gate keepers, so that they decide which Web sites go fast or slow and which won't load at all, or slowing down or blocking services offered by their competitors.
Net neutrality is the first amendment issue of our time, Franken a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in his speech yesterday that the issues threaten to rewrite basic rules of the internet. He said “Imagine if what is happening with television, where an independent producer can’t get a show on the air unless a network owns a piece of it, were to happen with the internet,” he said. “There would be no next YouTube or Twitter. There would only be what the R&D departments at the few mega conglomerates could invent and profit from.”
The best solution to solve this is to keep the internet open and free from discrimination. Having real net neutrality is when phone and cable companies cannot pick winners and losers on the internet. Real net neutrality is when we let those new innovators a chance to develop their ideas against Google or Yahoo because they don’t have to pay the ISPs for special dealing. We should do anything to support the Net neutrality. It is always good to give our opinion about anything we want since we have the right of speech and share our opinion to everyone, especially when we know that this might change our life and save the internet.
