The Ever-Persistent Threat To Net Neutrality: A Few Thoughts

So after we had the right of private browsing history taken away from us, our internet experience still faces another danger. Net neutrality, the free and open internet is now in grave danger. This is not the first time we have faced something like this. The last time this happened, we won and protected our right to a free and open internet. Now the fight still rages on, but day by day I am losing hope.

But what exactly is Net Neutrality?

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For those of you who don't know, Net neutrality basically means that everyone has a right to a free and open internet and the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and the Governments regulating the internet should not charge each user differently according to the websites he uses and data he consumes. Pretty simple right? But some people want to take this away from us.

Why should we be charged differently according to the websites we surf and the content we consume? We don't pay different prices for slow or fast telephone. Can you imagine what a "slow" telephone would be like? Can you imagine what it would be like if you were charged more for visiting Google than some other site?

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There have been numerous attempts to thwart our internet experience in one way or the other in the past. A few examples are the bills SOPA and PIPA which not only threatened free-speech and creativity but also innovation. Today's world lives and breathes due to innovation. Such strict laws threaten the survival of the online ecosystem and the right of privacy of an individual.

Nobody wants to live in a world where you are constantly under surveillance because someone high up in the government believes that you may be a terrorist. Desperate times do call for desperate measures but sacrificing one's privacy is almost never worth it.

Take a moment and reflect: do you really have any privacy? God knows who may be viewing your browser history right now, who may be reading your WhatsApp messages. The article here describes how a major security flaw in WhatsApp was discovered by a researcher at the University of California. When he reported how the messages could be read by Facebook, which bought WhatsApp a while ago, he received a reply stating that "Facebook was aware of the issue, that it was 'expected behaviour' and wasn't being actively worked on."

Terrorism is a virus that should be cut at the grass-root level, but to monitor the entire nation is not the way to go. And attacking the internet itself for "harboring" terrorists and terrorist mindsets is the worst possible way to go about this problem.

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Personally I think that the "freedom" of the internet is too much to stomach for some governments of the world. While it's not pure "freedom", it is still something. They perceive these slivers of freedom to be threatening, which is why every year the internet is filled with posts like this one. Every year something new pops up that is dangerous for our online presence and every year we have to fight for our basic right of free and open internet.

I don't think that this fight will ever end, until we impose the essential laws that limit piracy and use of copyrighted material but still ensure the existence of free-speech, creativity, innovation, open source content and most importantly privacy.