One issue becoming more heated in the political arena is the concept of Net Neutrality. Corporations such as Verizon and Comcast are tossing around the idea of creating “slow” and “fast” lanes in their internet service. The “fast” lane would be reserved for companies that pay an additional fee for the privilege. This would benefit companies such as Netflix and Google, which have higher traffic than most sites, while giving less priority to smaller ones that cannot afford the fee.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been brought into this issue by advocates who claim this system of allocating internet speed would infringe on the first amendment’s freedom of speech. Organizations have popped up, such as the Save the Internet Campaign and Battle for the Net, to protect it.

These groups claim that allowing powerful phone, cable, and internet companies to have that kind of control over internet speed could easily be abused. Without regulations from the FCC, they could deny content to some websites for their customers. Much of this is speculation, however, consider the possibility of your internet company fencing off the websites of their competitors, thus preventing their customers from exploring other options.

Another consequence of losing Net Neutrality is the stifling of independent sites. While the big ones like Amazon or Youtube would run just fine, small, up-and-coming sites would be on a much slower path, and thus, less appealing to potential viewers. Supporters of Net Neutrality claim that this would crush competition, and eliminate future revolutionary websites, noting that Twitter and Facebook started off small and only got as big as they are because of the equal opportunity of the internet.

Also, if websites like Netflix had to pay internet providers to get top-tier internet speeds, their prices would presumably go up.

One way that supporters of Net Neutrality fought for their cause was the Internet Slowdown. This took place on Sept. 10th. Several major websites joined in to slow down their speed for a day to display to internet users how it would be in a tiered speed system. Some of the companies that participated include Netflix, Reddit, and Mozilla. This event was made even more visible with a loading symbol constantly displayed on participating sites. Bloggers and website owners were encouraged to sign up and join the slowdown for a day as well.

An article entitled “Overwhelmed FCC extends Net Neutrality comment period” on cnet.com describes the massive surge of comments the site received. There were so many comments in favor of net neutrality that it crashed the FCC’s servers, forcing them to extend the deadline. There seems to be plenty of user support for legislating further net neutrality, although opponents of it point out that just because companies might abuse the system doesn’t mean they will. Only time will tell as pressure mounts from both sides for the FCC to make a decision.