It’s happening with such little fanfare that it may have escaped your notice, but a battle is going on for Net Neutrality. With the encouragement of the Trump administration, the FCC in the US looks to repeal it, though it has for now been restored by the US Senate.
Even if it didn’t escape your notice, you may not have any idea what that means, and why you should be concerned about its future.
Put simply, net neutrality is the principle that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) do not discriminate or charge based on who a user is, where content is coming from, and so on.
So why is it coming to an end a problem? Well, you may recall a few years back, BT throttling it’s dial-up internet speeds to drive people onto broadband; the risks here are much the same, but on an expanded scale.
It’s not beyond the realms of possibility therefore that businesses, with corporate interests to protect, could throttle or pay to throttle both access to competitors. Press influences, or bad political actors could readily throttle or pay to throttle access to information. That works in reverse too – the wheels could be greased in right direction, for the right fee.