Network Neutrality What it is, and what we can do about it

I'm really surprised this subject hasn't come up here yet! Net neutrality is a really hot topic of debate lately, and concerns us all. Basically, net neutrality talks about indiscrimination of websites in the internet world. That means that when you browse the internet on your computer, your ISP should treat Google and Yahoo! in the same way - no one gets bandwidth preferrance over another!

The American congress is about to vote on a bill that will decline net neutrality, which will lead to horrible consequences. Let's illustrate an example of what might happen. Say MSN is a big "supporter" of Verizon, while Google is not, and you're trying to point your browser to the Google website... without net neutrality. Verizon may make your access to Google incredibly slow, block access completely, or worse yet, make Google.com redirect you to MSN.com, who gets preference for their money! Do we want to live in a cyberworld where huge corporations control what sites we can go to and what sites we can't? I think everyone should want to be able to access a small blog with the same conditions that they can access a huge multi-billion corporation's website.

We must act now, because after the bill is passed it might be too late! Even though I live in Israel, I am afraid that if something like this happens in America, it might very quickly propagate to the rest of the world. I don't understand the whole political issues in the USA, but I do understand this: this thing is very risky for all us small citizens of the World Wide Web!

I've run across this website, and it made me sick. This is major corporations trying to create FUD, blaming Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft of being heartless and greedy corporations. That might be true for MS, and maybe Yahoo! (I'm not acquainted with this company), but I think everyone who has ever used Google's GMail service (and anyone who hasn't can ask me for one of my 1000+ invitations) can agree that Google does care about its customers. I was getting mildly persuaded by the website, until I saw what they said about Google, and I know how untrue that is.

Even though Microsoft has said it is for net neutrality, its Internet Explorer browser says otherwise. That browser is the monopoly of the internet surfing applications, and it implies that I can't access my cellular carrier's website to send free SMSs because I'm not using IE, and worse yet, it means that I can't access my school's website to download articles for my classes without popping up IE and compromising my computer's security. I heartly recommend everyone to move over to Firefox, if you already haven't, and start installing Da' Fox on all your relations's and acquaintances's computers! IE is making life really hard for web developers all around, and if we get Firefox into heavy circulation, maybe MS will finally make its flagship browser standard complaint, as should be, and then maybe websites can finally make themselves standard complain, as should be.

Sorry for the long rant, I'm just really touchy about these subjects. I might be wrong about a lot of things, so this is a great opportunity to fix me, to show your support, to persuade me otherwise, etc...

Thank you!

It is the telecommunications companies that are being greedy!! After all, the internet has been in existence for quite some time. And with so many companies offering broadband, you can bet that it can be a profitable business. After all, businessmen are all about profits. To me, what those telecommunications companies are trying to do is to earn money from both parties. They do not carry traffic for free. You might have free internet usage but someone is paying for the bandwitdh. It could be your university, your favorite coffee joint etc. but someone is paying the telecommunications companies to carry your traffic. And when Google, Yahoo and Ebay report handsome profits and double digit growth, it is about time to milk them!! Having said that, the consequences to users like us is quite unpredictable. The worst case scenario would be a total control of which sites are visible since packets to non-paying sites would be dropped off. A best case scenario would be something sort of like the postal service. There would be the regular service and the express service. The dangerous thing here is whether the telecommunications companies actually increases the bandwidth for the express service or just shifts the current bandwidth in favor of the express service, thus making the regular service slower than before. The best course of action for us is of course to maintain the current network neutrality. But ultimately, the decision would come down to who has more influence in the Congress and i believe the telecommunications companies have the upper hand. But it is still a long way to go before any legislation is passed, so we shall see how it turns out.

I don't find sitting around and waiting to "see how it turns out" a very responsible course of actions. We should be in the battlefield fighting the front lines!

Anyways, I totally agree with you that if my bandwidth is increased for certain sites, it would be far better than decreasing my bandwidth for all other sides (i.e., if I get more bandwidth than before for paying sites, or if I get less bandwidth than before for non-paying sites). This is only a worst case resolution though! I don't want to even come close to that state! This move will monopolize the internet, and will make it very difficult for smaller sites to break the barrier of recognition in the internet world. Innovation would be crippled horribly, and new ideas could be lost in the wake of huge corporations whom cherish money far too greatly.

I don't think we should sit around and wait for this to happen...