Argumentative Essay: Should The Internet Be Free In Canada?

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On January 8, 2004, hacker Adrian Lamo was caught hacking into major corporations such as Yahoo, Bank of America, Citigroup, The New York Times, and Microsoft. Mr. Lamo was convicted of compromising the security of these corporations and ordered to pay $65,000 in restitution for his serious crime. Astonishingly, all of the security compromises Adrian committed were through free public internet connections at local libraries and coffee shops. What if we gave free public internet connections to every citizen in Canada? Would citizens value it if they didn’t pay for it? Would more hackers such as Adrian use it for harm instead of good? And finally, who’s paying for it? Should the access of the internet be free in Canada? Well from the points …show more content…
My partner and I disagree with our opponents and believe that the access to the internet should not be free in Canada. First, would Canadian citizens, even value free access to the internet if there was no expense? After showing why my opponent’s arguments are incorrect, I am going to detail the basis of why free access to the internet would not be valued by citizens if the internet wasn’t paid for. (Reason why opponents are wrong). Why free internet access would not be valued by citizens. It would seem that if something cost $100 and something else was free, the free item would be much more popular. More people, realizing that they don't have $100, will jump on board with the free option. That’s an interesting theory, but unfortunately, reality doesn't always work that way. This is because, for example, you pay $10 for an event, you have a motivation. It may not be a lot of money, at 7:00AM when the alarm rings the $10 translates into $100 worth of motivation to get out of bed in the morning. Every dollar you pay for something has roughly $10 of motivation associated with it. A $10 purchase may feel like a $100 motivation, and a $100 purchase may feel like a $1000 purchase. Most people hate to waste precious money. If we paid for something and don't attend or use it, we feel like we failed. That fear of failure is a powerful force for good in this …show more content…
With free public internet hackers will be even closer than thought possible of hacking into major corporations and access to your personal information. With this investment of free internet it would be almost equivalent to having a hacker in your house plugged into your router and can cause serious internet crimes and with the free public internet it's easier to hide their identity and get away with serious crimes such as spam, information warfare, fraud, identity theft, and harassment just to name a few. Although these incidents happen in public places, which offer free internet today could you imagine how much havoc theses hackers would cause if they had full access to any computer. How strong is your firewall? On March 25, 2010, hacker Albert Gonzalez was caught successfully stealing over 170 million credit cards and ATM card numbers. Enough cards to be equivalent to a little over half the population of the United States. Third, free access to the internet is quite expensive to maintain. And who’s paying for it? For example, if Canada had agreed to provide free public internet access the most common solution to do this is building internet towers all throughout Canada. Today these towers do exist and can supply the internet roughly over 60 miles away in any direction. But Canada is about 3.8 million miles in size and it’s estimated

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