What the heck is Net Neutrality?!

John and I were talking over dinner last night and realized, we both have very vague ideas about what the heck net neutrality is and does, and why we need it in the first place... we both hit all the main points and understood what the bill is meant to do, but had different feelings about the whole thing. We both felt fairly "neutral" about the whole thing, it seems to be a fairly harmless bill to prevent a non-existent problem, so whats the big fuss?!



Here is the basic arguments for net neutrality (from the ACLU), It's the "We must prevent future problems that may or may not happen, because so far the internet is awesome and we do not want that to change!!" argument. I totally agree. The internet is awesome and we would like to keep it that way, so lets keep things going with the free market solutions that have kept it that way so far, and worry about correcting market failures if there ever is actually evidence that the market has failed us and our freedoms.

It's not like people's lives are at stake if some bastard company slows a customer's connection speed or blocks a website, but rather an area that has been successfully been kept in check by the free market of the internet up to this point. If the things that the net neutrality proponents actually do start to happen, then we can talk, but for now I think we are alright with our regulation-free wild, wild west environment of the internet and it seems to suit us just fine. One thing that both sides of the 'net neutrality' argument seem to agree on is... the internet is freaking awesome and we would like to keep it that way!

I just don't understand how allowing the government to enter into regulation of the internet helps to keep it the same as it always has been, rather it seems to open the door for some huge changes. I would like to keep the political pressures of lobbyists and special interests away from my internet, thank you very much!!!

As far as I can tell, this is a regulatory measure that seems relatively harmless and does pretty much nothing. It is just the government kicking the door open to further regulation and claiming its territory over the internet. It's kind of like an animal marking it's territory... it is relatively harmless other than the fact that it tells you that the animal is planning on coming back again.