I briefly debated the ethics of writing an opinion article on Net neutrality because I wrote an article on Net neutrality for the News section, but considering my position on Net neutrality, I’m sure that it will be fine.
The biggest political issues with Net neutrality are the age-old hands-on or hands-off government approach when it comes to markets, and a newer issue of whether the internet should be treated as a market, or as a utility.
Tom Wheeler, the FCC chairman who signed the current Net neutrality protections under President Obama in 2015 believed that in this day and age enough people rely on the internet for it to be treated by the government as a utility like water and power, which deserves a certain degree of protection from the government. The current FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai believes that the internet should be treated as a market and that it will be able to flourish in a system free of government regulation. Whether you side with Pai or Wheeler and how much you value net neutrality likely has to do a great deal with the extent to which you believe that the internet is a necessary service, and whether you believe that the government should protect necessary services.
To discuss the idea of the internet as a necessary service I will draw on my personal experience as a freelance writer. The vast majority of my income is reliant on my use of the internet to conduct research, compose articles, and communicate with clients. Therefore, if I cannot pay the Charter bill, I can’t pay the power bill. For me, the internet is a utility that I rely on for my livelihood as much as others may rely on roads or other infrastructure. That having been said, the entities that the internet needs protecting from are the internet service providers who may privilege certain content over others with fast speeds, better quality display, &c. In the absence of net neutrality.
While I certainly don’t trust my internet service providers to keep their hands off of things like competing media sites for practices like streaming, I hardly think that their newfound ability to “throttle” content will prevent me from doing my job and keeping the lights on. I believe that the internet is a utility, but I don’t believe that repealing net neutrality threatens the internet in that regard. While it may change the way that we interact with some content for leisure, I hardly believe that the internet as we know it would end.
