Thursday, 23 December 2010

Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality is a term that has been appearing across the internet and in American Media, but what is it and how does it link to Economics.

What is Net Neutrality?
Net Neutrality means neutrality across the internet, which is the theory that each user on the internet should have equal access to websites and each website should have an equal chance.
In other words you pay for internet access but not for each website.

Why is it an issue at the moment?
Net neutrality has become an issue at the moment because some american internet provides are not following the ideals of net neutrality, they are changing more for some websites than when accessing others.

What is the importance of Net Neutrality?
Net Neutrality is vital, at present the internet is a 'free' while you must pay for access once on the internet each website has an equal footing with the next website. If firms start charging for access to websites there are huge social and economic consequences!
Socially it will mean that smaller websites will be weakened against larger websites, if their is free access to main stream media and it costs a lot more to access an independent website then instantly the free of speech on the internet becomes threatened. The advantage of the Internet now is that everyone has an equal say, you can go to any website and it will cost the same as accessing another, so you can choice where to get your news, information and entertainment. If firms break net neutrality then they can price out the competition.
Economically the fall of Net Neutrality is a disaster. What is glorious about the internet is is very few barriers to entry, which has greatly increased competition is most markets and in the internet industry itself lead to huge leaps of innovation and markets that are close to that of perfect competition (the blog market for example).
Also with the fall of net neutrality firms have an anti-competitive weapon to used to wipe out their competitors, as explained in the video bellow if internet providers can charge consumers for each website they access then they can offer some for free and charge huge amounts for others which will wipe them out.

Steve Wozniak co-founder of Apple is amount many trying to save net neutrality. It should be a social and economic priority for all peoples and nations!

Top American Youtube news reporter and Vlogger Phillip DeFranco explains the concept perfectly in this video:

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