I do not know if you have heard of Net Neutrality, but it is where your Internet Service Provider blocks, or at least slows, the download of the page you want to view. You might be wondering why they would do that, the simple answer is that it benefits them in some way.

You ISP might have a deal with a website related to the page you are viewing and will block the page you are trying to get to, therefore discouraging your from using that page. By doing this you will try to find another page with the information you want and you find a page that your ISP has the deal with and pages get through without a problem. For more details feel free to watch Net Neutrality Video on Public Knowledge for more details in an easy to understand format.

This is not so good, but what can we do about it? Currently not a lot because as far as I am aware there are now laws directly against it yet, but I am sure you can think of a few that could apply. An example would be freedom of speech, or more specifically you freedom to hear what other people are saying.

Although there are no laws against it yet, or any other nasty things that ISPs do to their services, it is not really something that should be done. For a start it is against everything the internet stands for, the freedom to exchange information between friends and strangers alike. I do not think it will be long before someone takes an ISP to court over this, and hopefully not to long after there will be legislation in place from doing this but for now we can vote with our feet. If you find that this is what your ISP is doing make sure you tell as many people as you can about it, make sure they know you know what they are doing, after all, most of what you will tell people will be going through their systems.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.