To Control Or Not To Control

The Internet has always been a place in which you are able to voice your opinion on whatever you want, look at whatever you, access whatever you want and listen to whatever you want. What makes this possible is Net Neutrality. According to http://www. savetheinternet.com, “Network Neutrality is the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet. Put simply, Net Neutrality means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination.” To sum it all up it allows everyone equally access to the Internet.

The Internet grows more and more every day and it is amazing the amount of things that you can do on the Internet. Today, it is so easy to get your message/opinion on something across then it has been in the past. Back in the day, the only way that you could get your opinion across was if you owned a television company (chances were you didn’t), or you were a journalist and even if you had access to this you were still limited to what you were allowed to say. The Internet is what makes people’s opinions and ideas possible, without the internet this wouldn’t be what it is. John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton explain in Toxic Sludge is Good for You, “Hyped as the ultimate in ‘electronic democracy’, the information superhighway will supposedly offer ‘a global cornucopia of programming’ offering instant, inexpensive access to nearly infinite libraries of data, educational material and entertainment...’the technologies of communication will serve to enlarge human freedom everywhere, to create inevitably a counsel of the people’” (Stauber and Rampton). We rely so much on what the Internet allows us to have access to, without net neutrality we wouldn’t have all this access.

Net Neutrality has become the biggest problem to corporations. They don’t have all the control they would like to have when it comes to what we see and learn about them. Corporations want them to function like television; they want to control how much we see, they want us to watch them, in order to make money and they want to use the power of manipulation. The Internet has been a way for the truth to come out; this scares corporations. Net neutrality to them equals loss of control.

I don’t think there is better way to explain the need for Net Neutrality then to say in the words of Lawrence Lessig; “Free cultures are cultures that leave a great deal open for others to build upon; unfree, or permission, cultures leave much less. Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so” (Lessig, 30). The Internet is my freedom and yours, without it how would we write blogs or post videos; our opinions would be limited to our means. There are two sides to every story.

Works Cited

Franklin, Ursula M. The Real World of Technology. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc., 1999.

"Frequently Asked Questions." Save the Internet: Fighting for Internet Freedom. Free Press Action Fund. 7 Nov 2008 http://www.savetheinternet.com/.

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. New York, USA: The Penguin Press, 2004.

Stauber, John, and Rampton, Sheldon. Toxic Sludge Is Good For You! Lies, Damn Lie and the Public Relations Industry. 1st ed. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995.