How do you explain network neutrality to your less-than-tech-literate friends and family? It’s a broad and complex topic that is rather difficult to persuade people to care about. Of course, the best way to explain an issue like that is to demonstrate how it could effect the explainee.
That’s where TheOpenInter.net comes in. It’s a fancy illustration that demonstrates the general concept of a tiered internet to the viewer as he or she scrolls down the page.
It shows the internet as a series of tubes labeled with names like YouTube, Facebook, Gaming and Skype. They run from the ISP illustration down to a house to demonstrate how data from any source is funneled down to you for a single flat monthly fee. Then it shows the same tubes, only they’re different widths, labeled with price tags, and not all of them lead to the end user. Also, there’s a new, thick pipe marked “ISP Content & Services.”
This is something that is scarily close to happening, given certain ISP’s track records and the looming NBC/Universal merger with Comcast.
Some might say that the site oversimplifies things a bit, but that’s generally necessary if you want non-techies to understand it. Trying to cover every base ends up confusing people, and is partially why so few people know what network neutrality is.
The Open Internet: A Case for Net Neutrality [TheOpenInter.net]
