Net Neutrality: Should The Internet Service Providers?

In 2005 a tiny phone company, Madison River, located in South Carolina blocked its users from making telephone calls from an application called Vonage. Vonage was a competitor of Madison River, so when news reached Michael Powell, who was chairman of the F.C.C (Federal Communications Commission), he fined Madison River and forced them to stop preventing their users from utilizing Vonage (Wu). Due to situations such as the Madison River incident, net neutrality was created to hold Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to specific operational standards. The term "network neutrality" was coined by Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu to describe the effort by believers of an "open access" communications platform to treat all information on a network equally. (Pfister 169). Net neutrality is a set of laws that force ISPs to provide equal access to all applications, content, platforms, and websites (Friedlander 907). The FCC adopted the group of regulations in 2015 and then rescinded them in December 2017 at the request of the new F.C.C. chairman, Ajit Pai. Both sides of this argument agree that the internet is crucial to the welfare of society and the progression of the economy. Proponents recommend that the government should continue to uphold the net neutrality laws. Opponents declare the government should not regulate the internet with such constraints ("Net Neutrality: Should the Government Mandate Net Neutrality?").
Certain individuals believe that lifting net neutrality would open a free market. In addition, these supporters claim that there are very few violations of net neutrality. The assumption is that the ISPs will abide by a code of honor and not block rivals websites. The people against net neutrality believe that lifting it would lead to a free market, few violations, and will not limit the open