Week Four - Writing Assignment

The fundamental issue underlying the net neutrality debate is rights. With an emphasis on whether content providers, consumers, or network owners have more rights concerning what data is able to be seen/carried.

Two of the groups/organizations in favor of net neutrality are groups that are just starting out and religious rights organizations. The former is in favor because they do not have the resources to compete with larger corporations if the internet go towards a tiered system; however, with a neutral system they have the chance of getting just as many hits as a larger business and increasing their revenue (such as what Facebook has done). The latter is in favor because they enjoy being able to say whatever they want online, as they cannot always do so on television because of the screening process.

Two groups/organizations opposed to net neutrality are AT&T and groups that are also in favor of a free-market. AT&T, as a content carrier, would like to be able to make more money on the internet by employing a tiered service, ie. those who pay more get faster service and better responses. They would also like to stay up with the times and begin providing a quality-of-service network instead of the best-effort network that is currently in use. Groups in favor of a free-market believe that laizzez-faire is the best policy and that the "good" aspects of the internet will remain strong while the "bad" ones will be weeded out as long as the market controls itself and the government steps out.

I am in favor of net neutrality. While it may be helpful in certain instances to have the network owners reduce SPAM e-mail (I don't have a stake in that argument because I get very little SPAM), people will always find ways of getting their advertisements to people (I do, however, get quite a bit of junk mail through the post office). I am in favor of having people be able to see whatever they want and I believe that all data should be treated equally. One possible alternative is that instead of companies paying more to get their information to go faster, they can pay more so that they will have more of their information released (eg. longer summary descriptions on Yahoo! or more pop-up windows).

Signing off,

Alyssa Potok