This being my first blog post, it took me while to decide on what to blog about. Gay marriage? Racism? The war on Iraq? The Midterm Midtacular? No. It will be about Net Neutrality.
It's really not a life-or-death issue, but I think more Americans should be aware of this because we use the internet nowadays for almost everything. Net neutrality was one of the topics that kept coming up on so many news sites, so I got curious. I read a wikipedia article and several blogs about it, but it made no sense to me until my friend Chasen explained it to me through easy 2nd-grade-vocabulary words. Is it okay for broadband providers to start charging a fee to content providers just so that Internet users can load these content providers' websites quckly rather than slowly? If it is allowed, internet service providers such as Verizon and AT&T can choose to significantly reduce the speed of accessing certain websites such as google.com, netscape.com, and your grandmother's personal site-- unless Google, Netscape, and your grandmother are willing to pay a fee so that consumers like you and me can access their sites faster. Now big-name companies like google and netscape might be able to pay that fee, but what about your poor retired grandmother? Guess you're going to have to spend a few extra seconds or even minutes to load her website, if an ANTI-net neutrality law is passed. This is what is meant by tiering the internet. One tier (the faster one) goes to people who can pay that fee, and the other tier (the slower one) goes to people like your grandmother.
Net neutrality will keep the internet neutral to everybody no matter if you are the owner of a small blog or if you are the owner of Microsoft. Your internet service provider will not have control over what content gets to you the fastest. If you and I both paid for our DSL connections, then we should be able to visit both Grandma's website and Microsoft's website at DSL speed.
What's the other side of the story? It's that bandwidth is limited, and with the existence of bandwidth-hogging services such as Youtube and P2P, internet service providers are bearing the burden. That's why they want to start charging money. Who would suffer more? The internet service providers or us? If I were were your grandmother and I wanted to start a small Internet business selling hand-knit shoes, I'd have a hard time finding success, because people who would be interested in buying hand-knit shoes would have a hard time getting to my website since I am part of that slower tier.
Well. You decide.
If you want more info, that's what Google is for. :)
Oh and you can yell at me if I got something in this post wrong. :(
I learned a lot from that. It seems rather interesting and a little like politics.
Thank you.