Net Neutrality is found its way back into the national conservation, especially after Obama has spoken out in favor of it. Why do the Internet Service Providers (ISP) want net neutrality to perish? They want to profit off of the success of the websites the ISPs carry.
Its common knowledge that the internet has now become a utility as it’s nearly impossible to operate in the developed world without it. Perhaps the most beautiful thing about the internet is that it’s a level playing field for everybody, as AlterNet’s Jim Hightower has noted.
As he puts it, “the system doesn’t care if you’re royalty or a commoner, an establishmentarian or a rebel, a brand-name corporation or an unknown start-up, a billionaire or a poverty-wage laborer — you are entitled to equal treatment in sending or getting information in the worldwide webosphere.”
The internet is almost socialistic whereas those who contribute the most and best are heralded, and those who don’t are neither looked over nor cast away. They just exist. Those great contributors are highly regarded but they don’t run the internet. No one runs the internet. But the ISPs want to change that.
The ISPs want to get rid of net neutrality because they want to force websites to pay extra in order to get their content quicker to the customer. This creates a problem because many fear that pay sites, like Netflix, will end up charging its customers more because the ISPs are greedy. It puts content providers in a very awkward spot. Take a hit by paying the ISPs more, or raise prices on the customers in order to break even.
Essentially, only two groups, as Hightower noted, will come out successful if net neutrality is done for. First are the ISPs that would only be getting richer by scalping content providers for more money; and the second would be the big names on the internet: Netflix, large chain stores, and Amazon to name a few. It would otherwise kill the small, independent internet proprietors who would likely have trouble affording the ISPs rates.
ISPs could also effectively control and decide what types of websites they want to carry, even news and political sites. What we’re talking about here is massive filtering of knowledge and information. The ISPs want to kill the one thing that makes the internet so great by destroying the marketplace and free exchange of ideas and information.
