Net Neutrality Doesn't Work
By Clay Hamric
News December 19, 2017 After over two years of the net neutrality legislation being in effect, the internet has not become the utopia it was meant to. In fact, nothing has changed because there was never a problem to begin with.
The problem was that, in theory, a company could pay off an internet service provider (ISP) in exchange for more bandwidth than their competition, making the competition’s website take longer to load, putting them out of business. This legislation was seen as a great step forward, stopping evil corporations from this corrupt action – except they never have done it before. The act itself that the legislation is trying to stop is illogical for an ISP to do. Let’s say 70% of an ISP’s customers use Netflix and the other 30% use Hulu, their competitor. Net neutrality supporters would fear Netflix would pay the ISP to cut access to Hulu. What they don’t understand is that 30% of the ISP’s customers would then leave because they can’t access Hulu. It would be suicide for any service provider, which is why they don’t do it. Nonetheless, the government wanted to regulate it. Under net neutrality, every website is seen as equal. This means the same bandwidth afforded to Amazon must also be afforded to your average cat video blog nobody uses. If you have slow connection to a major site, it’s because everyone else is trying to get on and it’s against the law to increase the bandwidth out of necessity. This inevitably creates a slow internet (wait, wasn’t net neutrality meant to stop that?) Even more ironic is the fact that the “evil corporations” net neutrality is meant to stop are actually in favor of net neutrality. That doesn’t add up. The reason is in a little-known detail. The passage of net neutrality back in 2014 basically reclassified the internet as a public utility, making it subject to any and all government regulation. As always, this means open season for companies like Google or Facebook to make inside deals with the government, something their money can buy but the smaller companies can’t. Now through special agreements, a Netflix can pay for these illegal loopholes while a Hulu will fade away. It seems the best way to create a monopoly is to ask the government to help get rid of them. The past few weeks have been filled with hysterical cries that the internet will no longer be free and tweets will cost $4. However, these problems were nonexistent before net neutrality and despite what Stephen Colbert whines, they’ll stay nonexistent. In fact, the internet was never more free than in its earliest days – when there were almost no regulations. Companies weren’t regulated, and neither was information. It was exactly what net neutrality proponents say they want, and exactly what net neutrality isn’t. |
You may also like: |