Net neutrality, freedom of speech and the way we choose to live our lives!

By EverythingEvolves
First created 25 October 2008 | Last updated 06 February 2010

The internet is still young. Indeed, it is still in the dark ages in terms of where it’s likely to be in the next ten, twenty, fifty or a hundred years. It’s like London in the 1800’s except the opium dens, brothels and filthy streets have been replaced by dirty spammers, weirdo paedophiles and nut jobs that would rather live their lives through their computer than deal with real people in the real world. So it’s not perfect. Let us not forget though, it was in Victorian London that mankind made a definitive step towards an industrial revolution of innovation and creativity. Out of all the smog, disease and cockney rhyming slang came a new, modern world that everyone in the West and beyond is still enjoying to this day.

Forces are at work in the United States to stifle the innovation that the digital revolution has brought to the lives of many of us today. New laws designed to benefit large corporations and disregard individual creativity are being debated in Congress.

Network neutrality is the key to internet service delivery. Also referred to as net neutrality, internet neutrality or simply NN; it is a principle that mostly applies to residential broadband services but could one day apply to all internet provision. A neutral network is one that is unrestricted in terms of how quickly content from providers is delivered back to your PC over the web. Imagine a world where your service provider could block, restrict or deviate from the content that you want to see because it doesn’t serve their long term business objectives!

Advocates of net neutrality suggest that laws need to be put in place now before the telecom companies instigate a tiered service delivery model without us even realising they’ve done it. Internet Protocol is the methodology by which information is passed around the web, its co-inventor, Vint Cerf, has stated that "The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services.” He suggests that “A lightweight but enforceable neutrality rule is needed to ensure that the Internet continues to thrive.”

His point is simple, without net neutrality it would be pointless for creative developers and computer engineers to even try to deliver innovative alternatives to existing online systems or even design new ones because without the backing of a major service provider you could find yourself instantly ‘black listed’ and your idea stripped and sold off for parts before you even realised what was happening. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that eventually everyone would just stopped bothering.

Imagine a world without Google. Like Microsoft’s Windows platform, it was a bedroom idea, built in a basement and now it’s in use all over the world. No company or government has the right to put a price on this kind of innovation. No company or government has a case for restricting this kind of creativity!

Net neutrality is probably one of the most important issues faced by the modern world. Even for people that don’t have an internet connection, the likelihood is that they will one day – whether it takes a hundred years or not! The internet is the only free media left. In the same way that people in the 1800’s probably couldn’t foresee anything past the printing press, I can’t see anything past the internet. It is a free and open space for all mankind to contribute towards, learn from and experience. If it gets tainted and restricted by the government or multinational corporations in the same way that the press has, then we all may as well just go to bed using a copy of The Patriot Act as a pillow.

O.K so people shouldn’t be able to fill your inbox with emails about rubbish that you don’t want to buy. People shouldn’t be circulating illegal pictures of young children or horses anally intruding unsuspecting females. Nobody should be made to feel that their life in a virtual world offers them something better than their lot in the real world. The truth is that yes, the internet like Victorian London, needs to be policed - but that said, we cannot forget the fundamental principles on which this technology was created. The wide variety of liberal, progressive and creative minds that gave rise to this giant leap in human existence cannot be overshadowed by the conservative mindsets of a few greedy corporate heads that put profit before the value of real freedom of thought, expression and innovation.