Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments regulating the Internet should treat all data on the Internet the same, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication.

The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite to link billions of devices worldwide.

An Internet service provider is an organization that provides services for accessing and using the Internet.

Net Neutrality Explained by Wall Street Journal

The term was coined by Columbia University media law professor Tim Wu in 2003, as an extension of the longstanding concept of a common carrier, which was used to describe the role of telephone systems.

A common carrier in common law countries is a person or company that transports goods or people for any person or company and that is responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transport.

Tim Wu is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times.

Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City.

Net Neutrality: Fact & Fiction by Stuff They Don't Want You To Know - HowStuffWorks

A widely-cited example of a violation of net neutrality principles was when the Internet service provider Comcast was secretly slowing uploads from peer-to-peer file sharing applications by using forged packets.

Comcast Corporation is an American global telecommunications conglomerate that is the largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world by revenue.

Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer networking technology.

P2P, P-2-P, P2p and P-to-P may refer to:

Comcast didn't stop blocking these websites like Bit Torrent until the FCC ordered them to do so.

In 2004, The Madison River Communications company was fined $15,000 by the FCC in for restricting their customer’s access to Vonage which was rivaling their own services.

Vonage is a publicly held Internet telephony service provider, providing business and residential telecommunication services based on voice over Internet Protocol.

AT&T was also caught limiting access to FaceTime, so only those users who paid for the new shared data plans could access the application.

AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate, headquartered at Whitacre Tower in downtown Dallas, Texas.

Net neutrality rules are in place to protect consumers and keep the Internet open and free for all, however the future of net neutrality is truly unknown.

As long as it remains a partisan issue, then each new administration will continue to change the rules to fit their public agenda.

In April 2017, a recent attempt to compromise net neutrality in the United States is being considered by the newly appointed FCC chairman, Ajit Varadaraj Pai.

In the United States, net neutrality has been an issue of contention among network users and access providers since the 1990s.

Research suggests that a combination of policy instruments will help realize the range of valued political and economic objectives central to the network neutrality debate.

A policy is a deliberate system of principles to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes.

Combined with strong public opinion, this has led some governments to regulate broadband Internet services as a public utility, similar to the way electricity, gas and water supply is regulated, along with limiting providers and regulating the options those providers can offer.

In telecommunications, broadband is a wide bandwidth data transmission with an ability to simultaneously transport multiple signals and traffic types.