The Benefits Of Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is a concept that all information on the internet should be treated the same and should not have restrictions by internet service providers. The term was created by Tim Wu, a professor of telecommunication law at the University of Columbia (Thyra). Tim Wu believes that the public should all have access to internet information equally regardless of what it is and how much information is provided. Net neutrality would have been a benefit to the company Netflix when it was restricted bandwidth from internet service providers late 2014, thus leaving us the user incapable of using our paid subscription to them. The bandwidth restriction made it almost impossible to stream a movie from Netflix and was not fixed until the company paid …show more content…
It allows us to use and see more content information provided by content providers which will help us with our education. Vickie S. Cook, a director of the Center for Online Learning explains in her article Net Neutrality: What Is It and Why Should Educators Care? how “Barbara Stripling, president of the American Library Association, shared concerns that entertainment sites will be given priority to network access over education web sites (Stripling, 2014)”(Cook). Stripling believes that without net neutrality, entertainment companies can afford and pay for better accessibility. With net neutrality, that will not be the case, educational website will have the same opportunity than any other company. Cook also explains how Stripling mentions “the loss of Net neutrality could seriously impact students in rural areas of the country who rely heavily on online materials to supplement learning in both formal and informal ways (Stripling, 2014)” (Cook). If we do not have Net neutrality, than those students who live in rural areas will have to pay for a better internet service in order to view the same content as someone who lives in the city. This would be a disadvantage to them because they will not have the equal opportunity as someone who does live in the city. Also the internet has now become a key factor in the learning process with today’s schools. Many students would rather rent eBooks than actual books, because eBooks are lighter and are more accessible. Together with eBooks, there are different methods of learning new things. One example would be learning via video. There are many different teachers who teach over videos and use platforms like YouTube to upload their lessons our certain material. People who live in the rural area will miss out on these learning techniques if they do not have proper internet