Taming the wild internet

As the Internet becomes more and more developed, more and more corporations are trying to find a way to gain power over this wild frontier. It is a becoming a virtual manifest dynasty battle. For the past few years the United States has had major discussions over net neutrality. An article published on ZDnet, "Thanks to BitTorrrent, Net neutrality debate reignites", names a few examples of how ISPs are monitoring what customers in the states use on their Internet service. Comcast was caught blocking and slowing down Internet connections where they found bit torrent applications because those types of programs slow down bandwidth. According to FCC laws, it is legal to monitor Internet connections because it is an “information” service, not a telecommunications service-although skype, AIM, ichat and many others are popularity used as a telecommunications services. I don’t know how I feel about Comcast seeing what I do on the Internet, but nowadays nothing is private information. But I do think that it is strange that net neutrality is still a debate in the U.S. In many European countries you pay for Internet by bandwidth. Which means, a person who only uses the Internet for checking email and browsing news websites would pay much less for their Internet connection than someone who plays online games or downloads movies. This also easily targets those who download illegally. In France, not only do you have to pay more if you’re an illegal downloader, but you could also face loosing your Internet connection. A new law put in place last March allows ISPs to report people who are caught using bit torrent programs, and then they are disconnected from the Internet. A Time article analyzes how the law came into place. In France, since they already have pay-by-bandwidth, the new law comes down to protecting major record companies and movie distributors. The debate over net neutrality and illegal downloading is confusing. The Internet is so new that nothing is in black or white and no one knows how to regulate it or whether to regulate it. However, I will have to say I enjoy being able to watch whatever I want and listen to whatever I want without worrying about running out of internet connection or having to pay for a new song.