Net Neutrality: Principles, Ethics And Potential Impact

Question:

Discuss about the Ethical Issues in Open Internet Net Neutrality.

In today’s generation the Internet has already changed the way of accessing on the internet. In the current scenario it has become essential to have the internet service providers and the internet services provided by the government. It is essential that the internet users must treat all the usability of the data on the internet. It is the basic principle that has been forbid by the Internet Service Providers to slow down or blocking of the unwanted cites. It enables to access all the content an applications regardless of the source (Beck et al., 2016). The organisation has the appropriate principles to be followed by the Net Neutrality that is been mentioned in the European Law that no blocking or Reducing the speed of the internet intentionally by the Internet Service Provider so as to stop the application process.  The people of the Europe have full rights to access to the open internet and they should be given the priority to provide facility of accessing to the internet services via high quality networks. Net Neutrality has come up with an idea of open fair and free internet accessibility (Fleischmann et al., 2015).

From a Utilitarian Point of view, there are many people from the European parties which are impacted by the decision made of net neutrality. Generally, it is dependable on whether the decision made would be in their support and will benefit or will damage the main causes. The main Pros of Net Neutrality:

• Financial Burden- It totally depends that if the ISPs were charging the huge amount on the heavy usage of the bandwidth. That it would be thoughtful that who will bear the cost whether the website owners or the public. If Public was to be charged on this than, the access to the internet would provide more information with the dedicated speed and for this, users have to pay more cost which tends to build the communication gap. And if the website was to be charged than it is most essential that the e-commerce tool should be carried out. As the companies are working there and utilizing the more websites as free medium of source to promote their products and services. For this companies are given the priority for charging the extra amount for accessing to the internet (Fleischmann et al., 2017).
• Globalization- Net Neutrality is connected to a free market. It permits globally and specially to the new start-ups to compete with the current business in the market without being distinguished. It works on to progress made drastically with the net neutrality.
• Innovation and Creativity- Net Neutrality emboldens to the greater competency and it sometimes becomes an ethical issue being arise doing the innovation. For the innovation, public have full rights to share or express their views and ideas on websites, such as Personal Blogs or their own commercial web sites.
• Censorship-ISPs have the full rights to control over the internet for censoring and filtering all the web sites according to their rules and regulations and strategies they imply for the companies to hold.
• Privacy- ISPs can monitor everything that their customers are accessing over the net. All the activities made by the customers are been monitored to have the information being collected from the customers usage (Shin et al., 2017).

Deontology theory can be termed as those ethical duties which need to be followed for the normal ethical position that is basically judged on the basis of action based rules. It is been expressed on the basis of duties or obligations been made to bind the duty. It mainly focuses on the right and wrong human actions. Deontology theory generally talks about the social and economic arguments against the net neutrality instruction. It generally regulate on the worse consequences that leads to internet to unregulated relatively (Marsden, 2016). According to this theory net neutrality regulation is itself partial. One major assumption been made is on the both the ISPs and the customers to which both parties are been subscribed to the rules which to be followed. This would not occur if the ISPs have promised to provide the accessibility to the customers for full internet but they block some parts of the internet sites. So this is being unjust to the customers. Basically it is not providing the full rights to the customers so ISPs are withdrawn by its agreement. These scenarios are basically become the major issue for this they have full rights according to the system of laws and contracts to punish those sort of faults (Arasa, 2017).

Ethical Considerations

This theory basically emphasize on the virtues of mind and character. Virtue Ethics in terms of professionalism discuss about the nature and the character of virtues and other related problems. It mainly examines on how the virtues are been applied in real life. It is the continuing idea with a prehistoric root. In historical period the ethical philosophy was earlier known as the virtue ethics (Souza et al., 2017). It is basically imply for the neither to rule nor to make any significances. The mainly acceptable things for the virtues are a free religious terminology or implications. These make things free from the acceptance to the secular world. By following the virtue Ethics in an organization we can supply a means of adopting and incorporating rules into a person’s performance, making them more active. It is generally a powerful way of emphasizing towards the guidelines and regulations of an organization by translating them into inherent motivation. A practical solution of virtual ethics in IT is the practicality and simplicity. It can be formulated in simple terms that are engaging to the most of the employees in an organization. It is an independent to the belief of the systems to accept it and is been incorporated into codes of conduct for organizations.

It describe as, how the economic performers can do and create the contractual arrangements which is been presentable in the form of the asymmetric information. In this theory the ethical issues being described on the basis of the communication between the agencies and the inducements. It is basically the way of doing the business on an individual basis which generally develops the legal agreements between both the connections. According to the net neutrality, protections are a must for rising of the strong endorsements socially (Taddeo, 2017). The contract or the justice theory is the exceptional one than can be applied without any significance of broadening it. Generally in this case the ISPs do seem in the power and the position. For the contract side of the theory, the end operators and the application providers have agreed to pay the respective amount of the internet connectivity. The various ISPs also have the agreements among themselves for peeing of the connection. If they do not have the bandwidth for the connection to provide then the firms and individuals should not promise for the service on which they are unable to provide (Schmidt et al., 2017).

Utilitarianism

Conclusion

The Ethical Issues in ITC are the mainly biggest problems being faced globally and to overcome from all these problems it is essential to have the proper Ethical use of information and communication technologies that are supportable for the development in an impartial information, society need a safe environment for all the people in terms of the application of human rights. It basically consider with the main consequences and the actions that is being liable. It is a prime duty to provide the security to the people to its certain level (Marsden, 2016). There are cases where the Net Neutrality would not be a good idea. But for the limited accessing of a Net Neutrality with the exceptions such as the ISPs are able to block the malicious activities which are harmful for the various sites, business and government organizations are able to limit the network they usually access and other exclusions which need to be work on to find the valid exceptions for the general ideologies and moralities of Network Neutrality (Ford, 2017).

References

Arasa, D. (2017). Freedom and responsibility in the use of Internet: a handbook for democratic societies–Confronting the Internet? s dark side: moral and social responsibility on the free highway.

Beck, E. N., Crow, A., McKee, H. A., Reilly, C. A., Vie, S., Gonzales, L., & DeVoss, D. N. (2016). Writing in an age of surveillance, privacy, and net neutrality.

Fleischmann, K. R., Hui, C., & Wallace, W. A. (2017). The Societal Responsibilities of Computational Modelers: Human Values and Professional Codes of Ethics. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 68(3), 543-552.

Fleischmann, K. R., Takayama, Y., Cheng, A. S., Tomiura, Y., Oard, D. W., & Ishita, E. (2015). Thematic analysis of words that invoke values in the net neutrality debate. iConference 2015 Proceedings.

Ford, G. S. (2017). Net Neutrality, Reclassification and Investment: A Counterfactual Analysis.

Marsden, C. T. (2016). Comparative case studies in implementing Net Neutrality: a critical analysis of zero rating. SCRIPTed, 13, 1.

Schmidt, K. (2017). The 2016 Nobel Memorial Prize in Contract Theory (No. 19). CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.

Shin, D. H., & Lee, M. K. (2017). Public value mapping of network neutrality: Public values and net neutrality in Korea. Telecommunications Policy, 41(3), 208-224.

Souza, C A., Steibel, F., & Lemos, R. (2017). Notes on the creation and impacts of Brazil’s Internet Bill of Rights. The Theory and Practice of Legislation, 5(1), 73-94.

Taddeo, M., & Floridi, L. (2017). The Moral Responsibilities of Online Service Providers. In The Responsibilities of Online Service Providers (pp. 13-42). Springer International Publishing.