Why Net Neutrality Is Important
This is how I would explain it: the Internet as I see it should be a public realm, in that like a highway or any other public road, all people on the road are limited to the constraints of the road regardless of their destination. Whether you are headed to the mall or a local burger joint, you have to share the same road. Internet Service Provider’s such as Comcast instead want to sell fast lanes to the highest bidder, which would be analogous to Best-Buy purchasing their very own lane on the highway only for those heading to their store. The Service Providers like this as they make more money, and the ones buying these lanes like Netflix would like this to get faster service to their customers and thus draw new customers. While some customer’s may think this is good at first, it clearly infringes on the idea of the Internet as a public sphere.
Small Businesses and Individuals will be hurt by this inequality because they are fighting on an uneven playing ground. Big businesses are trying to change the rules of business online. If they are able to attract customers with their abnormally fast connections, their competition is put at an unfair disadvantage. Eventually, Internet Service Providers will have to sell out more and more of these “fast lanes” as customers will expect their services/web-sites of choice to be on the fast connection. This will simply result in a saturation of the “fast-lanes” to the point where there is no “slow” internet left; the Internet Service Providers just walk away with the profits. In that process a lot of small businesses who can’t afford to switch over will end up dying out.
Allowing even one company to participate in this type of activity entirely changes the dynamic of the Internet. We now have freedom and great innovation, but it could become a space closely controlled by big corporations with very little opportunity for new comers. Similar to the television industry, where it is near-impossible for anyone to just create a new station and have it syndicated on every television, the internet could transform into this realm.
I may have given an apocalyptic viewpoint there, but I think it is important to consider the possibility of the Internet transforming into a locked down space. Once the principle of openness is violated, the precedent is set for the future to continue this trend, until subscribing to the Internet will be like subscribing to television channels, here is one blogger’s interpretation.
It is hard to full grasp the effects these new laws will bring, but if one thing is for certain, we will have to fight to keep the Internet a neutral zone.
If my explanation was hard to follow check out this visual guide.

