Time To Get Picky About Net Neutrality

On November 10th, Obama made a statement to the F.C.C and the general public about his current stance on Net Neutrality. Put simply, Obama is encouraging the F.C.C to " adopt the strictest set of neutrality rules possible and to treat consumer broadband service as a public utility, similar to telephone or power companies." If the F.C.C were to follow his advice, this would mean that companies will not be able to pay for technologies like internet fast lanes and ISPs will not be able to block certain websites from certain customers. 

From a customer standpoint, Obama's opinions can be seen as common sense. Since almost every American relies on the internet for some form of communication, it could be a very risky process to be tampering with the Internets growth for the general public. Along with it being an important aspect to everyday life, the Internet also is a great way to continue to give a chance to those small companies that are trying to keep up in a very fast paced capitalistic country. If stricter laws were to be put in place, bigger companies like Google or Netflix will have more control of the internet with their fast lanes and even could pair up with ISPs to make sure they keep their monopoly in their given sections of the Internet. 

Obama bases off his entire opinion of this Net Neutrality issue on the idea that "ever since the internet was created, it has been organized around basic principles of openness, fairness and freedom." Again from the customers point of view, since we have really never been directly regulated with our actions on the internet, we may feel as if the internet has always been this free place for people to interact. And even though I agree with Obama's stance and argument, it still needs to be mentioned that the internet was not created in an "open" or "fair" manner. 

As discussed in class, the beginning of the Internet's life did involve a lot of discussion on how it should be run and which standards should be created. But, as we may know from the creation of other communications (eg: telephone, radio), the way the Internet was created in an autocratic manner by the groups who simply just had the most power. By example, if we take a look at all the hardware that needed to be built to get the internet up and running, most of the first servers and computers connected to the network were either universities with Department of Defense funds or computer geeks who were involved with the correct groups of people. These were the people who decided which protocols we would be using, what type of encryption methods will be used, and so on. Even though these choices worked out in the long run, they were not voted upon in the manner that Obama may be mentioning. 

Article Mentioned: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/technology/obama-net-neutrality-fcc.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news