Net Neutrality: The Death of the Internet

If you aren't yet familiar with the term "Net Neutrality," you soon will be. It is a loaded term that has been around for quite a while, but is just now getting a lot more press. The "Net Neutrality" concept goes by different names including "Open Internet", but they all mean the same thing: Government regulation of what you can and cannot look at on the Internet.

To explain how "Net Neutrality" works, let me give you an analogy.

Right now, without any "Net Neutrality" style regulations, when you place a 911 call, your call will go through no matter what. Even if all circuits are busy, the phone system will make sure you call completes even if it means disconnecting somebody else's call.

Now enter "Net Neutrality" style rules. Under "Net Neutrality," your 911 call would not go through. Instead, you would have to hang up and try again. Your call would not go through unless and until somebody else hung up, clearing a circuit in the phone company's system.

This is exactly what "Net Neutrality" would do for the Internet. You might not even be able to make a phone call, watch a video, or even check your email. "Net Neutrality" regulations force Internet providers to treat all traffic the same. That means that someone downloading a pornographic video can cause your emergency 911 call not to complete if you're using a voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service like Vonage.

There is another problem with "Net Neutrality" and "Open Internet" regulations. They will cause your Internet provider to pay more taxes and lose money due to regulatory requirements, which means higher prices for you. Because your Internet provider will be forced by the government to treat a malicious worm's traffic with the same priority as your online shopping, they will have to purchase more otherwise-unnecessary equipment just to keep up. And that cost will have to be passed onto you.

"Net Neutrality" doesn't sound so good now, does it?

Here's a secret: All Internet providers oversubscribe their services. This means that they sign up more people than they can actually provide service to. This works because they know that not everyone will be using the full bandwidth of their connections at the same time. This also works because they are allowed to prioritize traffic, ensuring that the most important traffic gets through quickly and isn't slowed down or throttled back by less important traffic. "Net Neutrality" would prevent Internet providers from using these techniques to provide you good service. They would allow the government to reach down into your private Internet traffic and monitor it.

The Internet has grown exponentially over the past couple decades without any help from the government. "Net Neutrality" will stifle innovation and turn the Internet into a slow, unreliable, expensive, government-controlled medium. Just look at the big telephone companies. They are hampered with government regulations left and right, taxed for everything, and they provide some of the worst service imaginable. Now big-government types are looking to do the same thing to the Internet. Don't let them.