Imagine you’re in your car, and you’re headed to work — let’s say it’s your typical summer job, nothing that you’re going to turn into a career.
Maybe you’re working the drive-thru window at McDonald’s, or you’re bagging groceries at Piggly Wiggly. It’s not exciting and you’re not exactly saving lives, but it’s a paycheck, and that level of independence is important to you.
Inevitably, you get stuck in traffic, because no matter how early you leave your house, it seems like every time you need to get somewhere at a specific time, there’s some sort of backlog.
So you’re stuck behind a minivan that has one of those stick family decals on the back window, when out of the corner of your eye, you spot a new road just off the interstate. It leads exactly where you need to go, and traffic is moving much faster there than it is in your lane.
You put on your turn signal like any responsible driver, and you move over.
A cop comes up out of nowhere and stops you. He says this road is for doctors only, and tells you they’ve paid a special premium fee that you can’t possibly afford, just to use this road.
If this situation would make you angry, the net neutrality debate should, too.
Net neutrality is the idea that everyone should be able to use the Internet for whatever they want, without being forced to pay a different fee than someone else based on content, site, platform or other factors.
By contrast, “closed Internet” is when companies or the government are able to restrict access based on standards that they come up with.
Of course, freedom to do whatever you want online isn’t the same thing as getting to your job on time, but net neutrality has been a part of our lives for so long that losing it would be a definite blow.
In 2010, the Federal Communications Commission came up with the Open Internet Order, which prevented interference with web traffic. But in January, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, said that the FCC didn’t have the authority to make these rules, struck down the order.
During a US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee meeting, Republican congressmen said that the FCC should back off and allow antitrust enforcement to do the work, headed by the Federal Trade Commission or the Department of Justice.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the committee chairman, pointed out that “regulation generally stifles rather than facilitates competition and innovation”.
He added that he believed the success of the Internet is due to the fact that it’s unregulated, and I have to agree.
Many of us have come to take an unregulated web for granted, and I don’t think that should change.
SaveTheInternet.com, an online campaign that seeks to protect net neutrality, says that the companies pushing to end net neutrality only want control of the broadband system, so that they can put their search engines or other services above their competitors.
It’s a dog eat dog world out there, that’s for sure, and every company needs an edge over their competitors.
But why not, I don’t know, just improve your services so people will choose you based on merit?
This debate can seem complex and confusing, but the bottom line is this: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Leave the Internet alone.