Friday, November 21, 2008

[N]et [N]eutrality


[W]hen Net Neutrality was first discussed in class, I was a little confused at what it was talking about. I have been accessing the internet since I was a young child, and couldn’t believe that your network provider could have the ability to redirect you to a completely different website, through the power of the internet. All throughout school, I always wondered why internet explorer was never available. Every time I tried to access it, “Page Not Found” would pop up on my computer screen, and redirect me to Modzilla, formally known as FireFox. I never knew what the cause of this was until it was brought up in my class by my Professor.
[N]et Neutrality is about the choice to choose your own content, and to browse whatever you would like on the internet, at the same consistent speed each time. Right now, major companies are trying to make the internet a “buyers market” meaning that people with the money should get the high-speed, and the people who may just the normal standardized price should get a slower speed. Right now, major industries do not like the idea of net neutrality, because it means that everyone has an equal right to the internet. What companies want to do is create a faster lane on the internet, and only people who pay them lots of money are allowed to use it.
[I] think that our internet in today’s society is probably one of the most important tools, used by everyone. It was an amazing boom in technology, and is available worldwide to billions of people. I think that if we lose net neutrality the internet will slowly begin to crumble, and the amount of access to the internet is going to decrease dramatically. Just think for a second, how much do you use the internet? I can honestly tell you that I use the internet everyday, whether it is checking my email, or completing research on an assignment, I have become reluctant on the internet as a valuable source of internet, and without the same guarantee of access that I have to it now, I think that I would be at a huge disadvantage.
[A]fter Watching YouTube videos in class about net neutrality, it has made me realize that we need to do something now about this. What amazes me is that I had never even heard about this before. All throughout high school, I was blinded by the fact that the internet was indeed working, but the service provider was redirecting me to completely different sites, in an attempt for me to bring them more money. It as if the computer had been “hacked” into, and someone was controlling my every move, as if I was a pon on a chessboard. I was being directed by someone else, in an attempt to stop me from accessing a variety of web browsers, and websites.
[I]n conclusion, I don’t think that people realize where are internet is heading. We have already started to see the effects of not having net neutrality, and things are only going to get worse. When I sat down and was talking to my family about this, they suggested that I should be the one to make a difference with my group of friends, and that we should bring this awareness to more and more people in an attempt to stop the attempts to get rid of net neutrality. When I asked my parents about how they felt about it, they told me that they didn’t care. That if I wanted to let this go past me, it would be my generation that would be suffering the consequences, not them. It was then that I decided that I was going to do something about it, because I am not about to let some of the highest most profitable organizations take over anything else!

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