Net Neutraility - Neutralidade da Internet

The Internet has become so much a part of the people’s lives that it is easy to imagine the Internet as a common service. The companies that provide Internet access – for example AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner – are known as Internet service provider (ISP). Nowadays, You can use it as much as you want, for anything you want. However, the way that people use the Internet tends to change. Net neutrality is the main component of an open Internet. It describes that whoever provides you access to the Internet should treat all content on the Internet equally. According to Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu, the best way to explain network neutrality is as a principle to be used when designing a network: that a public information network will end up being most useful if all content, sites, and platforms are treated equally. Net neutrality is sometimes referred to as the "First Amendment of the Internet”.

The ISPs act in the middle between a client (smartphone, laptop, computer) and the Internet. They are responsible for providing Internet access to their consumers. The ISPs want to treat the content on the Internet differently, so they can charge people more (or less) depending on what you use. In other words, some ISP could block a service such as Netflix or YouTube and charge for their own. Although this topic has been a principle since the day the Internet was born, net neutrality has reverberated the world in the last months. Although the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has considerable influence of regulating the Internet, at the present, no country is in charge of it, which makes the Internet an open service. In 2010, the FCC established rules to ISPs in order to make them offer fair and equal access to the Internet, whereas that the content is legal.

But why someone should care about it? Some people argue it is necessary because the Internet means innovation, they believe the Internet should be open. Think about electricity. Does the energy company charge you based on what you use? The answer is no. You can use the eletricity the way you want and you still paying a monthly fee because it is a common service, as well as the Internet should be whereas everyone access the Internet. On the other side, there are the ISPs that think that they are not obligated to provide the same service to everyone, which is a good point to go against the idea of neutrality. In addition, some people think they do not need to pay the same amount as others since they use the Internet in different ways.

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