A recent and hotly debated topic among businesses, politicians, and internet users in the United States is that of net neutrality. With the rise of the internet over the past few decades, laws and regulations have struggled to keep up with the ever changing environment. As such, the problem of whether net neutrality should be enforced, and to what extent, has been a dividing issue. This problem has come into the public’s attention recently due to infringements and controversy surrounding policies by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). In the following paragraphs, I plan to first define the concept of net neutrality, related topics which are crucial for an informed ethical discussion of the topic, and also related cases in which net neutrality …show more content…
They assert that failing to uphold it endangers rights of free speech and allows ISP’s to push their companies’ agendas, whether political, monopolistic, or otherwise detrimental to the consumer in a real or perceived way. Politically, an ISP might be within its current rights to throttle political opponents websites. Monopolistically, it is within the realm of possibility for an ISP to throttle competitors and discourage customers from moving to a different ISP. Additionally, users are known to have an intolerance for slow-loading webpages, thus, throttling of any website will most likely decrease the traffic to that service noticeably. This side of the argument tends to apply a Laissez-faire philosophy in describing their vision of how the internet should …show more content…
Additionally, as can be seen with the preceding cases, load on the existing network infrastructure is often cited as a cause for many breaches of net neutrality. Companies also often use the justification that throttling can be acceptable due to the illegal content of some data over certain protocols. Furthermore, ISP’s and political theorists make the argument that upholding net neutrality or signing it into law would stifle competition between the service providers themselves due to the difficulty in recouping costs from building infrastructure and the inability to control the load. Opponents of net neutrality tend to be the providers themselves in most cases, and they lobby politicians to push against regulation in this
When we think of those skilled in the art of rhetoric, we often jump to those we know are trying to convince us of something, like politicians, salesmen, lawyers, etc. We do not always consider corporate CEOs part of that group though Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, would have us believing another thing. On March 20th, 2014, Hastings published an article titled “Internet Tolls And The Case For Strong Net Neutrality” on Netflix’s official blog. Just under a month before the blog was posted, Netflix settled a deal paying Comcast, America’s largest cable and Internet service provider (ISP), for faster and more reliable service to Comcast’s subscribers (Cohen and Wyatt). These “internet tolls” go against the culture of net neutrality in America, which in its essence is when no piece of information is prioritized over another on broadband networks. Hastings took to their blog to advocate for net neutrality and against abusive ISPs. Whether he was conscious of his rhetorical finesse or not, he wrote quite convincingly thus turning this blog into an excellent rhetorical artifact. Reed Hastings’ blog post aims to convince American Internet consumers that strong net neutrality is important by appealing to their values of choice, frugality and empathy while simultaneously making ISPs seem ill intentioned and Netflix seem honorable.
Although the net neutrality debate didn’t come into the spot light so long ago, it has sparked controversy in the communications world. This concept provides a positive impact to the consumers, competition and network owners/internet service providers. It broadens the aspect of equality, which the open Internet was first based on. The profound effects on the aforementioned players provide a supported purpose to regulate the notion of net neutrality.
Schmidt, E. E., & Cohen, J. (2014, March 11). The Future of Internet Freedom. Retrieved September 26, 2017, from
There are over 2,405,518,376 internet users on a global scale. More than 50% of the world have a form of Internet censorship, and of those countries China, North Korea, Iran, and Vietnam heavily restrict its citizens. This recent topic has reached new heights in the US with the growing number of access to internet. More and more people are debating whether the internet should be censored. Internet censorship is the control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the internet. This would affect everyone and me. I specifically use the internet to read about controversial view and other information that gets ignored by the media or isn’t circulated anymore. Most of these sites would fall in the black list of censoring. A small percentage of users post conspicuous posts, graphic material, and infringing copyright links. Although inappropriate it shouldn’t demand internet censorship, because it goes against the individual rights of the people. Freedom of speech and press will be restricted by the government. To a point where people would be scared to express themselves, or spread information for they might be punished. Even if their opinion is erroneous and maleficent, it’s still that person’s opinion and he’s entitled to it. Same can be said for the common good everyone should be able to voice their opinions without censorship anywhere. Everyone should also have the access to any information on the internet. If anyone is offended by what is said on the internet, then they can remember to not visit the webpage next time and hold themselves accountable. This paper will examine the issue of internet censorship constituting a violation to the American people individual rights, common good, and the constitution.
While high-speed internet access is currently limited to a physical connection, our wireless technology is rapidly progressing. Most consumers also have an internet connect via their cell phone. This limits an ISP’s ability to abuse their power and filter or censor content from consumers. All of the telecom companies would need to work together in order to successfully filter content and this would run afoul of consumer protections laws. The coming 5G networks will further dilute ISP’s monopoly as it will be much easier for companies to provide internet access to consumers. As preciously mentioned, the United States internet was left unregulated for years and there exists very little evidence that the companies attempted to filter content or censor consumers media
Net neutrality was the big talk towards the end of 2017. Taking away net neutrality would cause chaos in my opinion. Making schools and other organizations pay to use technology only discourages them from doing so which is a major step backwards in such a technological point in time. The world is constantly creating new ways to implement technology to our everyday lives and charging us to do so is not a step in the right direction. Saying that getting rid of net neutrality will do away with discrimination is absurd. Discrimination was around way before the internet was but instead we once again have one political party trying to undermine the other by playing the victim. I do agree that it isn’t right that such huge corporations such as
The concept of Net Neutrality is one with large amounts of controversy behind it. The idea that the internet would give certain types of traffic priority, such as web page requests over video streaming, is necessary to support network growth while others stake the claim that giving this priority undermines the established internet principles of free speech and non-exclusivity. The Federal Communications Commission has put policies in place to strive to a more neutral internet, one such policy being the Open Internet Order. There is heavy debate over whether the internet should be neutral and around whether or not there should be regulations in place to dictate what contents can travel faster than others can. We will be working for Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) in support of net neutrality. Markey argues that net neutrality law is the “Declaration of Independence for the Internet,” where restrictions set on certain types of content on the internet do not limit freedom of expression.
Internet providers have never had any plans to block content or to try to degrade the performance of the network.” (Hart 750). Essentially, they think having the internet without any laws would be in general more beneficial. The parties who support the keeping of net neutrality and its laws include tech giants such as Netflix, Mozilla Foundation and Consumer Federation of America. Their arguments are that “they are concerned about the potential discriminatory service from providers. Telecommunications companies should be required to provide all the consumers equally regardless of their geographical location or income. If the FCC stops regulating, providers can decide to stop offering services to lower-income families or to poorer neighborhoods. Also, in the absence of regulation internet access providers will adopt a non-neutral
" Network Neutrality should not be banned “On December 14, 2017, the Trump FCC voted to make the open internet and the network neutrality principles that sustain it a thing of the past.†Network neutrality should not be banned because we keep losing freedom. Network neutrality should also not be banned because we do not benefit from it .Finally network neutrality should not be banned because the government can use censorship instead of network neutrality. We as people keep losing more and more freedom. ¨During the state of the union youtube follow-up interview on February 1, 2010 president Obama again expressed commitment to Net Neutrality ¨ protecting a free internet protects are free speech.
Net Neutrality is something that prohibits internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from speeding up, slowing down or blocking any content, applications or websites you want to use. Net Neutrality is the way that the internet has always worked. Without the Net Neutrality rules, companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon will be able to call all the shots and decide which websites, content, and applications we get to use not only that they will be able to charge us for our use.
... it could affect other aspects of our online lives. At this point we may just pay for it. However, there truly is middle ground, but unfortunately most people are not looking at it – nor is this article. It's not an either/or situation as everyone has put forward. We simply need to control what users are able to contribute to the internet, and where, rather than either allowing them to uncontrolled, or not at all.
An optimistic argument put forth by some experts is that even though historically technology displaced jobs in many industries, it also created new employment opportunities as well and there is no reason to think it would be different this time. I on the other hand take a slightly more grim view that accelerating technology can cause irreversible job losses and can make many jobs obsolete, more akin to central idea of the book “Race against the machine”. Policy makers need to ensure that Investments in education and technical training keep pace with the rapidly advancing technology otherwise large swaths of people will be left behind. Experts argue that safeguarding net neutrality is essential to keeping the web open and accessible to everyone, however those who are leery of the future internet say that Net neutrality will be compromised and the internet will be much more segmented, where only the rich can see the true benefits.
Internet is a powerful tool that allows users to collaborate and interact with others all over the world conveniently and relatively safely. It has allowed education and trade to be accessed easily and quickly, but all these benefits do not come without very taxing costs. This is especially true when dealing with the likes of the Internet. Countries in the European Union and Asia have realized this and have taken action against the threat of net neutrality to protect their citizens, even at the cost of online privacy. Internet censorship is required to protect us from our opinions and vices. Every country should adopt Internet censorship and regulation since it improves society by reducing pornography, racism/prejudice, and online identity theft.
The internet has been one of the most influential technological advancements of the twenty-first century. It is in millions of homes, schools, and workplaces. The internet offers not only a way of communicating with people around the world, but also a link to information, shopping, chatting, searching, and maps. This freedom to be anyone and to "go" anywhere right from the comfort of home has become a cherished item. However, there is always a down side to every up. Because of the freedom to post anything and access anything on the internet, the issue of regulation has arisen; for example, what should and should not be allowed on the internet? Who has the right to regulate this space that we cherish for its freedom?
Free speech on the Internet is a very controversial subject and has been the key problem surrounding the Internet today. The attempt to regulate and govern the Internet is still pursued by government officials. This subject has been intensified due to terrorist attacks against the United States and around world within the past years. The government believes that by regulating the Internet, it will protect the general public from criminal actions and eliminate the exposure of children to pornography or vulgar language. Senator Jim Exon of ...