What is Net Neutrality?

First a brief history of the Internet. In the 50's Project RAND began. This was communication through directly connected cables. In 1962 the main member of Project RAND was hired by IPTO section of DARPA. This lead to the connection of the first 3 Terminals. By 1969 ARPANET was released creating the Request for Comments system, still used today for Internet Protocols and Systems. Based on ARPA packet switching network standards were created by the ITU released as X.25 which was officially approved by 1974. in 1978 a few international companies including the British Post Office create the first international packet switching network IPSS. 1979 two Duke Students created the UUCP, or Usenet as most know it. A few other standards were created, but they still weren't connected. By the late 70 and early 80's more international communities connected more and more with each other. By the late 80's the first ISPs started to spring up, and the first commercial dialup was created by The World (company). In 1992 "Al Gore created the internet"...Okay so not really, however Congress did allow commercial use on the NSFNet...many university students were upset that it was now being used for non-educational purposes (Porn). The internet was officially established, but one problem...It wasn't completely global. Globalization finally came about with the switch from Gopher to WWW. After all of this the .com bubble formed and was expanding rapidly...Sadly on March 10, 2000 the .com bubble popped. The internet resurfaced and blogs, youtube, myspace, facebook and so on were created.


Now what does this have to do with Net Neutrality? Well during all of this it was established (unofficially) that everyone should have access to the internet. Which was fine, until phone companies wanted in on the action. Now remember the beginning of "Internet history 101" at the top? Phone Companies had NO part in creating the internet or even in the commercialization of it. It was all nerds and congress. But these phone companies were the ones providing the connection, so they figured they would own it. Now phone companies were given billions of dollars to make it better, make better connections, however they didn't. They did very little and kept the profits. Now they were after NN. In 2005 Net Neutrality was all but eliminated. ISPs were allowed to control what and how much people could see and use the internet, because of "Bandwidth overflow"...Which wouldn't be a problem if they built it right in the 90's.

So what is Net Neutrality exactly? Well Net Neutrality is that everyone has the right to access and contribute to the internet. Net Neutrality allows blogs like this one to exist. Net Neutrality, or what's left of it, allows over 66% of the content of the internet to be stuff created by YOU, meaning non corporations. I know what you're thinking, "well what if they want to make it better?" Well let's look at the history of Communications.

Communication History 101: Press. Once upon a time Print was created by almost everyone, millions viewed it, but the price to produce went up. What once anyone could contribute to, know only corporations could. The market of Print went to 100% of content being corporate provided.
Radio. Once the FCC started getting involved in the content of what could be in radio, NBC and CBS took reign. Content of radio went to 95% corporate speech, 5% being talk radio.
This could happen to the internet, scary I know.

Join me know in the fight for Net Neutrality and protect free speech. Got to
http://www.savetheinternet.com to learn more and act now
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmVGayHTPQM&feature=related to learn more, very informational video.