With net neutrality passing, we must ask if this vote to regulate
the internet is worth it. Did this vote between unelected representatives
just kill the internet or not? Let us discuss.
No difference in Bits: First of all, this not only affects
your internet experience, but the content of your radio, television and phone.
Reason being is that all these technologies use the internet to transmit
the information. Thus, the government will lump all these bits together
as part of distributing the bandwidths evenly to make it their version of
"fair" and "equitable". So the same amount of
bandwidth for say a broadband internet must be equal to the same amount for a
television channel or vice versa, even if that much bandwidth is not needed.
As such, your television shows will now buffer in the same way some
internet videos do. But if you want to manipulate it so you can watch
unimpeded, you will probably have to buy special boxes to prioritize the data
yourself. So this will be annoying for regular television watchers and
internet content users.
Loss of freedom of speech: With the internet being regulated,
the government has the opportunity to control who can say what on the internet.
So they can actually censor what we say on say a chat room, or on a blog
which is something they could not do before. Also, the government, just
like they did with television, is require certain content on a website, such as
a percentage of content being educational or some other standard.
Therefore, we may be forced to advertise, or say things we do not want
associated with what we put on the internet ourselves.
Harms progress: Did you know that phones and radio
were a utility once? When the radio was deregulated it became 100% free
(excluding the recent addition of satellite). But before this, only
certain types of radio could be sold and the technology used in them had to be
pre-approved. Phones were another travesty of government regulation.
In the 1950s to the 1970s we had rotary phones because that was all that
was allowed. Then they (government) let them become push button phones.
That is 20 years’ worth of waiting for innovation. However, when
they deregulated the phones we got call waiting, answering machines, and touch
screens, all year after year of each other. It was progress and evolution
done in years rather than government regulated decades. Government
regulation of the internet invites the slowdown of such progress.
And that is not all. This invites
government sponsored monopolies. Google apparently was allowed to read
and edit the regulatory set up, but no one knows what they did, as non industry
members and even other government officials were not allowed to read it, let
alone edit it. So hopefully Google changed it for the better, even though
that does not stop the government officials from making post edits to undo, or
further harm progress and promote their favored businesses over startups who will
now probably get squashed.
Conclusion: We are now currently stuck with a
potential and colossal failure of government regulation that may even make it
easier to tax the internet, or limit future access to the benefits of the
internet itself. I am speaking of the freedom of speech and information
exchange here people. So turning the internet into a utility from my
standpoint is a bad idea.
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