A large part of American history has developed around the idea of personal freedoms. From the very beginning, America has fought towards the belief that every person deserves to choose what they support based on his or her personal preferences. From 2015 to present day, the issue of net neutrality is extremely relevant to nearly every citizen, despite the fact that most don’t even realize what those words mean. Net neutrality is the idea that almost every website on the internet is treated equally and covered in the same payments sent to the ISP, or internet service provider. Without the current parameters requiring net neutrality, ISPs would be able to lock certain internet services behind a separate paywall, or throttle loading and downloading speeds on competing websites.
Recently, Net Neutrality has been receiving a lot of attention throughout the internet. The recent rise of awareness is most likely due to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) plans on voting for or against it this upcoming December of 2017. This has led to a lot of publicity within the issue, and an inevitably large group of people asking: what is Net Neutrality? An excellent explanation of this concept can be found within former President Barack Obama’s statement on Net Neutrality from 2014, a time when the nation faced a similar fight to maintain the free and open internet. Obama said Net Neutrality as “essential to the American economy,” and “one of the most significant democratizing influences the world has ever known.” The former president supports these claims by explaining that Net Neutrality can “lower the cost of launching a new idea, ignite new political movements, and bring communities closer together” (Net Neutrality: A Free and Open Internet). However, it can still be difficult to pinpoint exactly how Net Neutrality effects internet services, and what this idea of a free market involves. As stated later in the 2014 White House statement, Net Neutrality maintains four basic ide...
