Net Neutrality’s Potential Fate Forces Everyone to Say Goodbye to the Internet

Net+Neutrality%E2%80%99s+Potential+Fate+Forces+Everyone+to+Say+Goodbye+to+the+Internet

Kasia Lipa, Staff Reporter

On December 14, 2017, two female senior MBHS students spent their lunch period in Room 320 laughing at comments such as ‘What is a Twilight Tower?’ ‘Topic #4 please?!’ on a live stream in Twitter. The Twitter live stream was the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) Open Meeting in Washington DC, where the members of the FCC and others discussed important issues such as Commission’s Emergency Alert System, Rural Health Care, Twilight Towers, and Topic #4, the anticipated users on Twitter where waiting for, the fate of Net Neutrality.

According to Google, “Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.”

Fatema Siddiqa, senior at MBHS, said that Net Neutrality is impactful for society especially because this is an age where the internet plays a crucial part in people’s lives. “It causes petitions, news, educational purposes however once it becomes hard to access that’ll be unfair for people who can’t pay much to access the same opportunities.”

Siddiqa’s mention of ‘unfairness for people who can’t pay much to access the same opportunities’ comes from the FCC’s voting to repeal Net Neutrality, 3-2.  The vote was a win particularly to the chairman of the agency, Ajit Pai, who opposed the regulations. The chairman opposes the regulations because it prohibits the ability for service providers to slow down certain websites which would essentially create a ‘slow lane’. The ‘fast lane’ would be for consumers and companies who paid premiums to get access to websites.

Angelica Tejada, editor of MBHS news website, said that repeal of Net Neutrality would negatively impact society. “The expensive cost of the internet would also impact our freedom, particularly to the ones with the desire to create small businesses. Without a strong foundation, those people are doomed.”

Tejada’s mention of the ‘people [being] doomed’ is correct if the next step happens to officially repeal Net Neutrality. Despite FCC’s vote of 3-2, Congress has to bypass a legislation that states that Net Neutrality is officially repealed which would provide less restrictions for service providers.

Congress is represented by 535 voting members, 435 for the House of Representatives, and 100 Senators, 2 members from each of the 50 states. With all these representatives and senators representing a specific state, Ms. Feinstein, an Economics and Government teacher at MBHS, said that it’s important to get a hold of your members.

“We all need to continue to contact our representatives and let them know that is important to you and why. Only by proving to the representatives that they will lose the support of the people if Net Neutrality disappears cause we cause them to take steps to make change.”