Net Neutrality

While reading the article on #Ferguson, I was impressed to see that it fit so well with things happening right now, even though the traumatic events in Ferguson happened around six months ago. The discussion of net neutrality is extremely relevant as of this week. On February 26, 2015 the Federal Communications Commission approved the net neutrality policy with a 3-2 vote. The goal of this policy is to make sure that the Internet is treated as public entity and no government of corporation should be able to control access to it.
I wanted to learn more about this current issue, so I found an article on npr.org that outlines net neutrality and what you need to know. According to the article, the backbone of the proposed rule is that there could be no blocking, no throttling, and no paid prioritization. These are all rules for broadband providers attempting to gain more money.
At the end of this article, a clip from “Last Week Tonight” with John Oliver spent thirteen minutes putting a humorous spin on the rules. I recommend watching this video because it is funny and informative, but there were just a couple things in it I wanted to discuss. John Oliver makes it seem like there is currently net neutrality, which we know is not the case. Most people have not been aware of the monopoly cable companies have, but through charts in the video, Oliver displays how Comcast was able to slow down Netflix in order to have them agree to certain terms of an agreement. Although I have known about the issue of net neutrality because of this class, it was exciting to see how much publicity it is getting right now. Both the common internet user and big businesses alike can get behind this protection of net neutrality we are discussing in the United States right now.

4 thoughts on “Net Neutrality

  1. Victoria Edsell

    The best thing that John Oliver said was “if you want to do something evil, but it in something boring.” People, including myself, literally do not read anything when it comes to terms and conditions, we simply sign away our rights. If we want to see effective change it needs to start with the people and their demands. There are evil, or monstrous humans that significantly effect our experience, unfortuantly a major disaster needs to strike before anything can really be accomplished.

  2. caropark

    I absolutely love John Oliver, he definitely stepped up his game and almost as great as Stephen Colbert. His references and metaphors are so on point like the dingo babysitter. I now want to move to Estonia for their high speed internet despite the Shrek attacks. Hurray for net neutrality. “If you want to do something evil, just put it in something boring.” Remind’s me of Google’s motto, don’t be evil.

  3. fmanto

    It’s really interesting for me to think about the fact that we’re fighting for net neutrality when in reality, we don’t even have that now. The most recent issue regarding net neutrality would be making it even more unfair for users to access the information they need. This whole “fast lane” and “slow lane” goes against the main purpose of the internet. But after reading this article, I don’t think many people realize how much data and information is being regulated even now. Side note: Great John Oliver bit.

  4. abwrubel

    I think that as long as we exist within a capitalist system, net neutrality will never come into being in its idealized state. Products require that data is skewed, for the sake of creating a consumer base. By making this comment I’m not saying capitalism is bad, I just think that goods and capital will always be valued higher than information or knowledge.

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