Net Neutrality, The Rights We Don’t Know We Have

This article has been submitted by the 10th-grade English team as an outstanding opinion editorial written by a student from the
persuasive writing unit. 

Imagine going to a fast food restaurant and ordering a burger. But you have three choices, slow, regular, or fast, ‘burger making speed’. Each speed has a different price. Which one would you pick? Slow? Excruciatingly slow but the cheapest price; Regular? Not as slow but still snail speed and sticker slapped on with a more expensive price. Or fast burger making speed? Ultra fast, ultra price. It’s your choice. This is the future of the internet.   

Net neutrality is the future of the internet. It’s the beginning of a world where mega companies will be able to control the speed people will be able to use the internet. Companies like Comcast currently own smaller divisions of internet providers and capitalize on their monopoly. Net neutrality is the freedom you currently have on the internet, the choice of ‘this’ web site or ‘that one’. But soon that choice will be made for you. You won’t have the broad choice you do now. But this isn’t a new thing. Companies have threatened to charge customers for websites in the past. In 2005 there was a previous faze of net neutrality. This will cause mega-corporations to compete even more than they currently do, meaning these companies will buy up large traffic websites like Facebook, or Wikipedia and charge customers per minute. This is identical to paying ‘per flush’ each time you use the toilet. 

The internet is moving into a ‘dark age’ with the idea of Net Neutrality even being a consideration. If the topic moves in the direction it is, the internet could potentially be a privilege for only the wealthy. But why is this important to the average web-surfer? Well, lawsuits are being waged in US courthouses about the topic deciding the fate of the world wide web. This is arguably the most high-profile legal case the internet has ever faced. Why should the internet be free and unrestricted? For one this is a huge marketing scheme for corporations to get more money. The freedom of the internet promotes and helps small businesses get off the ground. With the repeal of net neutrality, internet providers will be able to pick favorites, cutting out low traffic websites.

But there are two sides to Net Neutrality. The argument is understandable from both sides, for one, these companies are trying to limit bandwidth making the internet much faster and limit lag. Another angle of Net Neutrality is that these huge money-hungry companies are trying to gain as much profit as possible, and by doing that they are charging every internet user for the speed their machine can surf the web. What is the use of the internet if it isn’t free? The internet thrives because everyone has access, and everyone can share their opinion and find people with similar likes, but that’s just one very basic level of the internet! The internet is used so businesses can promote themselves, the internet is used for marketing, the internet is used to enrich the lives of people with knowledge. The internet is something that is free, let’s keep it that way.