Below I posted a pretty long but very important video on net neutrality. If you don't want to watch the whole thing I'll try to sum it up as best as possible.

Basically, net neutrality is a highly political and extremely important issue that you will probably be hearing about more and more in the coming years. The idea of net neutrality is for the government to step in and prevent Internet Service Providers (Comcast, Verizon, even old school AOL) from implementing a structured pay system for the internet service they provide. What this means is that for a certain price, you can get access to a limited number of big name website. Say for $29.99 a month you can access 50 predetermined internet sites that include abc.com, yahoo.com, and cnn.com and others. Then for $39.99 (or $10 extra a month) they'll give you access to google.com and wikipedia.com. For just $10 more you can finally access youtube.com and facebook.com. Finally, for only $75 a month, you can have unlimited access to the internet. Now, maybe that doesn't sound that bad to you since you generally only go to those sites that you get in the $39.99 package, and if you really want access to the entire internet, you'll just suck it up and pay the $75 a month which is probably only $25 more than you pay now...not a big deal right? The problem with this is that 90% of american's will probably only pay for the $29.99 or $49.99 package since in their mind, that's all they need. What this will do is basically destroy every website that's not included in those packages. That favorite little recipe site of yours, or your own personal webpage that you've made just to share your pictures and maybe write a little blog, all gone. See, those little websites that make the internet so great, won't be included in those cheaper packages and since 90% of American's won't have full access to the internet, nobody will be able to visit those sites and there won't be able to afford to stay in business. Most little websites like that rely on moderate amount of traffic in order to generate revenue from ads on their sites. If no one is visiting their site, they won't be able to afford to pay for the site anymore and will eventually shut down. This means that the internet will eventually turn into a place where the only webpages that exist are the one's that are included in the 30, 40, or 50 dollar package.

Another big problem is that you, the consumer, will have less options for buying and pricing out products on the internet. Let's say you're redoing your deck and you want to find the best price on materials. So logically, you would check HomeDepot.com or Lowes.com and see who's cheaper. But maybe you're not happy about their prices and want to check out how much the local lumber store in Philadelphia costs. With today's internet, you could check as many mom and pop lumber yards or deck construction companies you want and truly find the right price. Well if homedepot.com and lowes.com are the only one's included in those 100 webpages than you're shit out of luck in finding a better price. This would pretty much eliminate the internet as a tool for shopping online. You would be forced to buy a product from a limited number of websites who in turn, could raise their prices since they don't have to worry about being beat out by smaller companies.

There are many other problems that will arise that probably can't even be foreseen. Even today, with the two issues I talked about above, it's hard to argue against net neutrality. Granted, it's not very popular to think about government involvement in any facet of life, but this is one where I believe we need it. We need the government to keep the internet open and accessible to everyone, just like it is today.