Jan 2, 2017

An issue that America faces currently is the FCC (Federal Communications Commision) voting to diminish the Net Neutrality laws. Net Neutrality guarantees that ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) will not discriminate against a user through the slowing down of service or the charging of money to view content. If the FCC is successful in its crusade to diminish these Obama era laws, a possible outcome would be the blocking of websites behind paywalls. For example, if a user wants to view certain websites or applications (Youtube, Hulu, Netflix etc.) then they must pay extra money each month on top of their internet service bill. This will have massive effects on the internet as well as its users.

Mr. Steve Trunkey, CKHS’s librarian, had quite a bit to say about the net neutrality repeal and its effect on the populous of the United States. Mr. Trunkey stated that,“[The FCC] claim that voluntary measures and transparency are good enough to insure that corporations won’t become abusive. However, the truth is that deregulated environments do lead to abuse of consumers and horrible things happen – such as the financial meltdown in 2008 that instantly wiped out savings for many of us so that we are now facing the prospect of working right up to the grave.” If the FCC was to repeal Net Neutrality the potential for a decrease in the economy could increase.

Another problem that most will have with the change will be the power that most corporations will have to oversee what you look at on the internet. As a result of this, these corporations can target people with advertisements. Mr Trunkey stated that, “We should not need to live in a world where we must do things like install virtual private networks in our homes just to avoid the scrutiny of both large corporations and possibly the NSA.”

The throttling of internet speed will be a major issue for the people of the US. The removal of the Net Neutrality laws will increase the chance of this happening. According to The Verge, after contacting many corporations, it was discovered that many corporations actively support the FCC’s vote to repeal Net Neutrality. If throttling occurs, many people will have to pay extra money in order to gain access to faster internet speeds.