Week 5

First I would like to say that I appreciate the humor in this week’s material bro
ught by John Oliver, it was nice to be able to laugh and find some humor in a serious topic.
Secondly I think that restricting content this is an invasions of privacy and we can put it in the same bucket with the NSA surveillance that we learned about in week 4.    As a citizen I should be able to do what I want with my belongings (as long as it is not illegal) with the right to privacy. I am pay for the internet, which means I pay Comcast $50.00 a month to deliver internet access to my apartment through a cable line. Once that internet reached my apartment and I access it with my Wii, cell phone, laptop, tablet, and TV it is my business and I can use it to search, download, stream, and access whatever I want. I don’t want to be told I have to use a certain search engine or that I am not allowed to access a certain website. It would be like Comcast as the system administrator on my computer, I would be an authorized user and Comcast would put blocks and restrictions on what I can access. To me this sound like Comcast turning into China with controlled searches.
Not only does this net neutrality issue restrict access it also comes at a heavy price. Say amazon pays Comcast to let Comcast user’s access amazon, now amazon has to increase the costs to their users and their users are also paying a higher premium for internet. It is a double whammy. Pay a higher cost to access more internet and pay a higher cost to access your preferred content—like you are getting double taxed!
Another issues I have with this debate on net neutrality debate it why so much regulation? What happened to deregulation? If citizen don’t like the way a company operates we won’t use that company and the company would have to change to meet consumer demand. One thing that America thrives on over other countries is market freedom. Supply meeting demand and if there is no demand the company will die. Corporations come and go every the years because of the choices they make. If Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Cox, etc.. go out of business there will be 5 companies ready to gain their market share in a minute. We always want to make the government regulate something to protect us but this overregulation is just going to end up coming back and biting us in the butt. Oliver stated the Comcast already has terrible customer satisfaction rating and I would be willing to go without internet for a couple of weeks waiting for a new provider to come in and hook up my service if Comcast ever tried to pull a stunt like this. Let the consumers buy what they want and let the market do the rest of the heavy lifting. If this ever becomes an issue of unfair tactics to get more money then let the government step in to put that business in check.
A final point I would like to touch on that was brought up was internet providers having regional monopolies. If you have ever moved or went to visit relatives I am sure that you have noticed that different regions have different cable and internet provider options. There is really no competition or choices for consumers out there. Although there are lots of different providers for these services none of them really fight over the same territories—there are no “turf” wars. I wonder if these companies ever have meetings and map out the areas they service. I think this issue needs to be addressed by someone like the FCC.
At the end of the day no matter what the government rules on it is up to the consumer to do what is best for them and I think that we way underestimate ourselves and the power we have over the open markets.