redblueamerica.com

I'm no expert...at anything. Keep that in mind while you read this post.

I am, however, an open-eyed consumer. I try to be mindful when making a serious purchase. My Internet connection is a serious purchase as it plays a large role in my professional and personal life.

Net Neutrality is big businesses way of turning a greater profit without changing the business practice. Remember the 90's when Coca-Cola reduced the amount of soda that was put into each can, but kept the price exactly the same? Think along those lines.

The dilemma here is that better profits for Coca-Cola meant another positive factor in the economy, but less soda for the consumer.

So who wins?

Well if you we're the owner of Coca-Cola would you have done the same thing? If you were a stock holder would you have praised the people that ran the business? On the flip side as a consumer, do you feel like you've were slapped in the face?

This is exactly why net neutrality is such a hot issue. On one hand it's good for consumers and business, but on the other...well it's bad for consumers and business.

Imagine this:

Say you wake up in the morning and turn your computer on to check out the day's news. You type in your favorite local news site and sit back and wait for it to load. For examples sake, let's say this web site is buffalonews.com.

You notice the status bar is still turning after a few seconds so you decide to get up and make some toast while you wait, thinking maybe your internet is slow for some reason.

When you sit back down, the page is still trying to load. So you start to become impatient and hit the stop button. Now you type in an international news site, let say economist.com. Low and behold, it loads immediately and grants you instant access to explore.

Why did this happen you ask? Well your hypothetical cable/digital phone/internet provider told buffalonews.com and economist.com that if they wanted their sites to run faster, they'd have to pay a price.

Buffalonews.com couldn't afford it, Economist.com could.

Economist.com eventually takes traffic away from buffalonews.com on a daily basis, as well as other news sites that couldn’t afford the price. Obviously, this leaves Buffalonews.com in the dust.
So, net neutrality is the idea of basically leaving the internet alone. All the web sites of the internet have an equal chance to gain an audience as they're all "running at the same speed." It's also the idea that you internet provider can not block access to any web site on the internet.

One of the larger arguments for net neutrality is the idea that small business will no longer be able to compete with big business on the internet as only the big businesses can afford this price.
One of the counter arguments is that business is all about competition and the inevitable evolution of that competitive atmosphere must be embraced.

Now I’m putting this in very simple terms. The issue is a lot more complex than this as there are legitimate arguments on both sides.

After you watch Ted Kennedy’s message, check out the op-ed by Andy Kessler from the Wall Street Journal who gives counter arguments.

And just to be clear, I’m a regular reader of The Economist and its news site. It was only used as a hypothetical example.