Greg's Corner

With net neutrality gone will history repeat itself?

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai

This past Monday, the laws that required all internet traffic to be treated equally known as Net Neutrality have been repealed. Believe it or not, there are people who oppose Net Neutrality, not just corporate shills or heavily lobbied politicians either. There are normal consumers out there who believe Net Neutrality is a bad thing. In my opinion, these consumers are blinded by partisan politics. One of their main arguments is that nothing bad happened before the Obama-era laws were put into place, but that’s simply not true.

Back in 2008, internet service giant Comcast was caught slowing down traffic to users of BitTorrent. While BitTorrent is the favored method in which pirates steal paid content, it is also used by many to share legitimate files. Comcast at the time was admonished by the FCC for throttling this traffic. Comcast also throttled the traffic of what they called heavy internet users although they now claim they no longer do that.

This is just a glimpse into the future of the internet without Net Neutrality protections. It may not happen overnight, but slowly but surely large internet providers will start rolling out ways to get more money from consumers by installing paid fast lanes that they will probably claim are new ‘features’. Not all hope is lost though although it may take years to have Net Neutrality restored. If you want to fight for the restoration of Net Neutrality, the best thing you can do is to go to the polls and support those candidates who support Net Neutrality.