Net Neutrality: The Right To Privacy

Eric Schmidt once said, “The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.” The Internet is something that most of us use on a daily basis. Many take for granted how free and open the Internet is, but with eager Congressman that could soon change. In recent news, there has been increasing talk of Congress passing laws to diminish a set of rules and regulations known as Net Neutrality. Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers (ISP) should treat all internet traffic equally and sets the standard on what those ISPs. While the idea of Net Neutrality holds together the rights we have within the internet, many attempts have already …show more content…
Internet post-Net Neutrality would infringe on our rights to privacy. Net neutrality guarantees, among many other things, that Internet users information cannot be taken from them by their Internet Service Provider, or ISP. “ISPs have something that companies like Google and Facebook (and even agencies like the NSA) don’t: direct control over your connections to the Internet and the devices you use to connect to it. Messing with Net Neutrality requires ISPs to monitor our online behavior…” (Levy). Without it, these companies are unrestricted in their effort to take as much of your data and personal information you leave on the Internet as they want. With that data the ISPs are free to sell it to whomever may pay them the most for it, whether it be the NSA or other third parties. This benefits no one but the pockets of the greedy companies who want to carry this out such as Comcast or Verizon. This is an issue that any American should not have to deal with under the writing of the …show more content…
Authors from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, state that “given the growth of data traffic on the Internet, there are fears that an “exoflood” of data will ultimately overwhelm the Internet if proper traffic controls are not allowed. Streaming video, such as that from Netflix, constitutes large and growing portions of network traffic” (Wihbey). This means that without the proper funding, the ISPs soon might be unable to afford the resources for upkeeping their Internet so it can handle the excess traffic. The journal article goes on to states, “Internet service providers claim that they “cannot bear the costs for the necessary network infrastructure investments without tapping additional revenue streams” (Wihbey). While the majority of those in favor of cutting Net Neutrality are within the Internet Service Providers, these factors are something to take into