Net Nutrality is a very hot topic which is very conveniently looked over by the world media.
What is Net Nutrality?
Basically Net Nutrality is the protection of the internet from ISPs who are looking to blackmail every single internet website.
International Giant Virgin for instance has already stated that it will reduce bandwidth to it’s customers on websites that do not pay a premium in the near future, many other ISPs have also stated this as well. So why not th big debate? Most ISPs are owned by media corporate giants, go figure!
What would this mean to us users? Well the general degridation of the internet, starting up a new internet business would be harder due to the new lack of bandwidth and many businesses would go out of business because they could not aford to be held to ranom by a multitude of network providers.
Imagine for instance you lived in the midle of nowhere, isolated but in contact by regular bus services. Now imagine that the bus decided to only go to places that paid a premium, limiting you to comercial giants who could suddenyl afford to rip you off because you had no choice of going anywhere else and they had the excuse of paying costs to increase prices. Sure you could walk to another place, but it would take all day!
The only option left would be to move house to somewhere with a better ISP.
Of course net nutrality doesn’t just stop at drawing awarness to bandwidth reduction, you may also find that in ISP could cut a site off, cut you off from other ISPs (Whch has already been done in Europe, causing an Uproar in World of Warcraft gamers who can no longer access the game because their ISP failed to reach a deal with another ISP on its Internet strategy)
Now imagine your ISP cut you off from all the news sites but its own, all the shops but its own, and so forth and so on. The internet would be in danger of becoming sectioned, with most people being forced to use one single provider.
Now you could say that one ISP could stick to net nutrality and keep open bandwidth to all sites connected to it. Now, just playing a theory here, what would happen if all the other websites turned on it and blocked it completely?
I have to admit the thought scare me.
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