I Guess Phone Companies Don't Agree with Free Speech.

Free speech is seen as a right in our society, not a privilege. Whether it be protesting in the streets of Washington for the rights of same sex couples, or writing a blog for your mass communications class about how the world is mediated. Net Neutrality is the principle that the internet should be an open space that anyone should be free to write whatever they want, without having it regulated. So basically internet service providers can't block, speed up or slow down anything on the web due to who wrote it or who owns the site.

Currently Net Neutrality is at risk as telephone and cable companies work to own all rights to the internet. This would mean they would decide which websites would go faster, slower, or won't be able to load at all. So companies like Time Warner or Verizon could make their websites move at a faster pace then their competitors. Why is this so bad? Well it would mean that those large companies such as Disney and Wal-mart would have to pay these companies to have faster bandwidth on their sites so their sites would run faster. Which we all know wouldn't b too much for them to pay for. This is bad news for other companies who wouldn't be able to afford to keep up with these companies. Even a blogger like my self wouldn't be able to get my message across because it would either be blocked or to slow to actually be seen on a computer. The cable and telephone companies already own about 98% of the broadband market. If they own it completely it will go against all morals of free speech.

At the University of Guelph-Humber we use Cisco Systems to log in to the wireless internet. What we don't know about this system is that it lets the universities service providers control what sites the students can go on. This is done by providing filters to keep students away from bandwidth hungry sites such as peer-to-peer applications. If they are able to do this with peer-to-peer sites, who knows what will be blocked or slowed done next.

Sources:

"Frequently Asked Questions." Save the Internet. 24 Nov. 2008 .

"Examples of Net Neutrality." What is Net Neutrality? 24 Nov. 2008 .

Here is a speech by Barack Obama on his belief in Net Neutrality.