Net neutrality has been a hot topic among the media and public this year. With a topic of such prominence, it’s important to understand what net neutrality is and how it can affect you. Also featured are a timeline of important events in the debate, as well as a graph illustrating the various prices of Internet across America.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By Kevin Krilich<\/p>\n
Net neutrality goes deeper than just possible price changes<\/strong><\/p>\n Internet neutrality, also known as net neutrality, is the idea that the Internet should be free and open for everyone and that no piece of media or information should be given preferential treatment over another piece.\u00a0 For example, a video on YouTube should load at the same speed as an article on the New York Times website.<\/p>\n To put it another way, net neutrality is a concept says that an Internet service provider, like Comcast, should not be able to charge a user or a content provider, like Netflix, for faster access to certain Internet contents.\u00a0 This type of charging for content speed is referred to as a \u201cfast lane\u201d or also as \u201ctiered\u201d Internet.<\/p>\n Net neutrality has been a prominent topic in the news this past year because the Federal Communications Commission is crafting rules on how the Internet should be regulated in the United States.\u00a0 These debates came about as a result of the FCC\u2019s previous \u201cOpen Internet Order\u201d being overturned in January 2014.<\/p>\n The rules, which called for transparency, no blocking, and no unreasonable connection discrimination, were overturned by a U.S. appeals court because the FCC had previously classified the Internet as an information service.\u00a0 The FCC was trying to regulate the Internet like a telecommunications service, but the commission doesn\u2019t have the authority to do that when it is considered an information service. The appeals court did reaffirmed that the FCC can promote the growth of the Internet and suggested the FCC act to work toward an open Internet.<\/p>\n The current state of net neutrality<\/strong><\/p>\n This leads to where the American debate about net neutrality, with a variety of different sources giving their input on the topic.\u00a0 In May, the FCC invited the general public to leave their thoughts on how to best keep an open Internet.\u00a0 During the several months the comments section was opened, the FCC website received over 3.7 million comments about the topic, with many comments from the public asking the FCC to ensure net neutrality.<\/p>\n Supporters of net neutrality, including President Barack Obama and companies like Netflix, would like to see ISPs be classified as Title II common carriers.\u00a0 This means that the FCC could regulate the Internet like a telecommunications carrier and ensure that the companies follow rules to work to benefit the public.<\/p>\n In a statement outlining what he would like the FCC to do for net netruality, President Obama said the following:<\/p>\n \u201c\u2019Net neutrality\u2019 has been built into the fabric of the Internet since its creation \u2014 but it is also a principle that we cannot take for granted. We cannot allow Internet service providers to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas. That is why today, I am asking the Federal Communications Commission to answer the call of almost 4 million public comments, and implement the strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n President Obama\u2019s plan has four main components. One component is that ISPs should not block any website.\u00a0 ISPs should not throttle Internet speeds, meaning companies can\u2019t intentionally slow down speeds.\u00a0 There should not be any paid prioritization fees for companies.\u00a0 The last component calls for increased ISP transparency, where there is net neutrality between Internet providers and the rest of the Internet and not just between Internet providers and the users.<\/p>\n Companies like AT&T, Verizon, IBM, among many other telecommunications and technology companies, have stated that they are against net neutrality. One of the arguments against net neutrality from these companies is that net neutrality would make it more difficult for ISPs to invest in better network infrastructure. Companies would not have incentive to improve their networks if they could not charge the companies that use it the most a higher fee to help recuperate the costs.<\/p>\n Other arguments against net neutrality say that it would give the government more control over the Internet.\u00a0 Since there has been little rules or regulations before the past few years, there shouldn\u2019t be more intervention as everything has worked out fine so far.\u00a0 Another argument is that it isn\u2019t fair to charge everyone the same price, as every person and company uses a different amount of data.<\/p>\n Net neutrality and everyday life<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr. Patrick Ferrucci, a communications professor at Bradley University, says that the net neutrality debate is essential \u201cpeople versus corporations.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt its core, the Internet is a telecommunication and should be classified as such.\u00a0 Corporations shouldn\u2019t be allowed to choose and set speeds for everyone.\u00a0 Take a company like Comcast for example.\u00a0 They own NBC, so there\u2019s a high possibility of preferential treatment,\u201d Dr. Ferrucci said.<\/p>\n He added that a lack of net neutrality would stifle innovation as well. The possibility of paying more for faster speeds would hurt smaller or start-up companies since they potentially couldn\u2019t get the speeds like NBC would have.<\/p>\n If the FCC decides to create rules that would favor corporations over open Internet with Internet fast lanes, Dr. Ferrucci said it would be a First Amendment issue.<\/p>\n \u201cNot the government, but corporations would decide what\u2019s important for the public.\u00a0 It\u2019s the fundamentals of free speech.\u00a0 There should be the same rights and speeds for everyone.\u00a0 It\u2019s not fair any other way. Information sharing would be hurt, though some people wouldn\u2019t notice a difference in speed or availability,\u201d Dr. Ferrucci said.<\/p>\n Regardless of what the FCC decides to rule on, Dr. Ferrucci said that online media like Netflix, YouTube, and Facebook would adapt to the changes or die.\u00a0 He said that rules can\u2019t stifle progress, and gave the example of how Internet speed, stability, and availability have improved, as well as how Netflix has progressively gotten better at streaming and faster over the past several years.<\/p>\n Dr. Ferrucci said that society is in an interesting period right now when it comes to digital media and data usage. With almost everyone with a smartphone and a data plan and everything going digital, now\u2019s a better time than ever to establish boundaries.<\/p>\n \u201cCBS has a digital subscription now, HBO is going digital soon as well, that\u2019s why it\u2019s important now to adapt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Ideally, he would like to see the Internet classified as a telecommunication and everything works as it does currently. When asked about President Obama\u2019s neutrality plans, Dr. Ferrucci said that it works well enough for most people.<\/p>\n \u201cIn some ways, it probably doesn\u2019t go far enough.\u00a0 However, anything that gets people to understand net neutrality is important,\u201d he said. \u201cI would like to see the president\u2019s plan happen.\u00a0 Overall though, anytime something in public is debated, hopefully good information comes out of it. People need to be educated on the topic.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t understand why people would be against net neutrality unless they work for one of the corporations in favor of it,\u201d Dr. Ferrucci said. \u201cNobody I\u2019ve ever heard is on the side not net neutrality except for the corporations. You could never put your trust in corporations fully. There needs to be some oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Timeline of net neutrality<\/strong><\/p>\n This is an interactive timeline to the current events of net neutrality.<\/a> Included are key events leading to where the debate stands today, as well as links to important documents that contain relevant information. WhatIsNetNeutrality<\/a> provided the dates used on the timeline.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Comparison\u00a0of internet prices<\/strong><\/p>\n Another topic that has come up with net neutrality\u00a0is the availability and price of Internet service across the United States. This interactive graph shows how eight different cities compare to one another.<\/a> The data used for this graph was taken from Open Technology Institute.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Net neutrality has been a hot topic among the media and public this year. With a topic of such prominence, it’s important to understand what net neutrality is and how it can affect you. Also featured are a timeline of important events in the debate, as well as a graph illustrating the various prices of Internet across America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[64,169,34,172,170,171],"class_list":["post-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-general","tag-finalproject","tag-netneutrality","tag-com425","tag-fcc","tag-net-neutrality","tag-patferrucci","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":744,"href":"http:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions\/744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/com.bradley.edu\/newslab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}