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Devin Curtis

CJ 1010

Antonette Gray

November 11, 2022

Net Neutrality
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Table of Contents:

Abstract Introduction

Explaining Net Neutrality

The importance of maintaining Net Neutrality

Factors contributing to Net Neutrality

Persons and parties involved in legislation for or against Net Neutrality

History of Net Neutrality

Sources

Assignment Reflection
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Abstract Introduction

My writing in this essay is meant to explore the idea of net neutrality, I want to

focus on exploring how net neutrality is influential to modern life, specifically how net

neutrality and criminal justice can be linked together, I want to explore both sides of net

neutrality, these specifically being the argument for or against having net neutrality. Net

neutrality is something that impacts everyone in some way or another. Net neutrality is

important for everyone, I want to develop an understanding of how influential net

neutrality is. In exploring this topic through my essay I will be able to teach myself, and

others about the importance of maintaining net neutrality, how it can affect our justice

system, who would be impacted the greatest if there were any changes, and what we

can do as citizens to preserve the neutrality of our internet.

Explaining Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is the concept of equal and fair access to the internet by internet

providers for everyone. This influences how internet providers are able to market

access to citizens, the rules and regulations so to speak. Net neutrality is defined as

“the principle that internet service providers should enable access to all content and

applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular

products or websites.” There has been controversy about changing the legislation

around net neutrality to benefit the providers rather than the users in the past decade.

Internet providers want to capitalize on an established market by changing the rules to

benefit themselves rather than the users. There was a lot of backlash surrounding the

idea of changing net neutrality laws and regulations, and the idea was scrapped. But

who knows how long we have until there is another major push against net neutrality,
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which gives us all the more reason to want to fully understand and develop an opinion

about the future of net neutrality.

The importance of maintaining Net Neutrality

The importance of net neutrality should be realized by as many internet users as

possible, but we first need to understand why net neutrality should be important for

anyone. The idea that people should have fair and equal access to the internet should

sound appealing to most everyone, but recently in the last decade there was a big push

by internet providers and people like Ajit Pai for a change in the rules and regulations.

This change that they were pushing for would mean the end of equal and fair access. It

would be replaced by a more modernized system to capitalize on people's usage of the

internet, it would allow service providers to charge people for certain privileges while

online, it would give people the option to pay for services that we have free access to

right now. One of the benefits argued by internet providers and people like Ajit Pai is

that in paying for services and products like this you would be able to pay to have

improved access to things like faster streaming from websites and services, faster

download speeds, access to certain sites as part of a paid for package. If this sounds

like something you would enjoy, you may be against supporting the future of net

neutrality and instead be in favor of allowing the legislative change to allow companies

to make these services purchasable.

Yet most people would argue against being in favor of a change like this, many

people are satisfied with our current net neutrality laws. These laws protect people

online from internet providers by allowing the continued use of websites and services to

be accessed by individuals who already pay for some internet service package to be
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able to access the internet on a day to day basis. Changing the legislation and laws that

we already have in place would be detrimental to many who don’t want to pay for an

even more expensive package deal than they already are, why should we as people

have to pay more for services that we already have free access to and want to continue

using? Well this is the main point of the backlash against changing our net neutrality

laws, it simply would not benefit people but rather it would benefit corporations, and

internet providers by allowing them to make demands of people to pay more for what

we already have.

Factors contributing to Net Neutrality

There are many factors that contribute to net neutrality, one such factor is that by

allowing our net neutrality legislation to be changed we would be allowing internet

providers to throttle and prioritize internet access for those who don’t pay up or aren’t

interested in paying more. The idea of throttling the internet is described as “Internet

service providers may intentionally slow down customers' service to limit the total

amount of bandwidth consumed. This, in turn, can allow ISPs to minimize network

congestion or charge more for the privileges of higher bandwidth” effectively allowing

internet providers to abuse their power of control over the internet speeds provided.

Internet service providers could use this tactic to target wealthy individuals, businesses,

corporations, and companies. Effectively using throttling to manipulate people into

paying more for better service, but in contrast to this idea it would also target minority

populations by not allowing for the same access and privileges as their wealthier

counterparts.

Persons and parties involved in legislation for or against Net Neutrality

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Throughout the main points I have already addressed I have mentioned internet

service providers in general and individuals such as Ajit Pai who are in favor of

changing the legislation surrounding net neutrality laws. These internet service

providers such as Google, T-mobile, Verizon, Cricket, and many more would benefit

from a change in net neutrality legislation because it would allow them to charge more

for services, and to prioritize some of their customers over others. In Ashley Chase’

article, “Neutralizing Access to Justice: How the Demise of Net Neutrality Hurts

Prisoners the Most” I came across this quote about companies that stand to further their

own gains “These issues are almost universally discussed in terms of large-scale,

commercial sites such as Netflix, Google, and Amazon, and not in terms of justice.”

meaning that many big companies that are tied in with the internet stand to gain from a

change to the net neutrality laws and legislation. Ajit Pai is the big name that kept

popping up in my research. He was the Former Chairman of the Federal

Communications Commission of the United States, and it was his proposed idea that

we should consider changing the net neutrality laws.

I have also mentioned how it can affect average people or persons who would

need to access the internet and how changing the legislation surrounding net neutrality

could affect them. Essentially people would be impacted by a plethora of different

factors, but it would boil down to one fact of the matter and a question. This being, how

much do you value your internet access? People would have to choose what internet

abilities they would want access to, and the quality of the internet available would vary

depending on how much you have available to spend on any given service.

Net Neutrality and Criminal Justice

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Net neutrality and criminal justice go hand in hand, in researching the topic I

found that by changing net neutrality laws it could put those facing trial or convicted

persons at a great disadvantage for maybe not having the same access to information

that others do.

History of Net Neutrality

The history of net neutrality is relatively short, with the internet being a recently

created product of industrialized society, the rules of the internet and legislation

surrounding it are comparatively new when considering how long civilization has been

around. The internet was created or is considered to have its birthday on January 1st, of

1983. This being considered, the internet is only 39 years old! Compared to the U.S.

constitution, which was created on September 17, of 1787 making the Constitution 235

years old! Pretty big difference there. My point being that with the creation of something

new, changes, discussions, and arguments about said thing can be made hundreds of

years later.
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Conclusion

In conclusion, net neutrality is something that impacts everyone in some way or

another. The idea that legislation surrounding maintaining net neutrality is subject to

change in the future is a disturbing idea. However disturbing it must be acknowledged.

There are many ways that people can help to preserve net neutrality, first and foremost

being that we should stay informed about what is going on. I have come to the

conclusion that Net neutrality must be preserved for the sake of equal and fair access

being maintained in the future for everyone.

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Sources

Four sources against preserving Net Neutrality:

The FCC was at one point against net neutrality
Internet Providers stand to gain from abolishing net neutrality
Fought till the end
FCC chairman Ajit Pai out, net neutrality back in

Four sources in favor of preserving Net Neutrality:

Obama on net neutrality
Save The Internet
Why do we need Net Neutrality?
Source of sources?

Both / Informative:
Pro vs Con article
Neutralizing Access to Justice: How the Demise of Net Neutrality Hurts Prisoners the
Most
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Assignment Reflection

What assumptions have you made (outside of the research information evaluated)?
I had made assumptions about the way net neutrality would affect people on a large
scale that were not entirely true, though many of the assumptions I had before starting
this project were actually confirmed in my research. I found that I had many similar
ideas about the topics as others did. Seeing the impacts it would have on so many
people helped me to reconfirm my assumptions.

Do you need to investigate more facts and data?

I think that there can always be more research done for any topic that you are interested
in, facts and data are important. I feel like it could improve my paper if I find more facts
and data that contribute to my claims and ideas in the paper.

Does the conclusion you came to make sense?

Yes I feel like my conclusion makes a lot of sense.

Does the information researched, and your assumptions support the conclusion?
Yes I feel like the information researched, and my assumptions support my conclusion.

Did you ask the right questions? Did you ask enough questions?

Yes I feel like I had researched enough to answer my questions that I did have. Though
I feel like some of the questions I had may not have been exactly what I needed to ask
for this assignment.

Was there more than one possible conclusion?

Yes there are multiple conclusions, though I feel like there is only one that is valid and I
chose that to be my conclusion.

How has this assignment shaped or changed your perspective concerning the issue?

This assignment helped me to develop a deeper understanding of net neutrality.