U.S. Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, representative of the Republican party, on Tuesday, December 19, 2017 has introduced a new bill attempting to tackle the repeal of net neutrality. Though many people in the country are in favor of net neutrality, most of those supporters aren’t satisfied with what Blackburn proposed - or don’t even tolerate it.

For one, in the eyes of many Americans, this bill fails to save net neutrality for what it stands for. And secondly, this bill only seems to demonstrate the minimal capacity of which Blackburn has to understand how the internet works.

According to The Verge, her bill consists of the right of the Open Internet Preservation Act to stop blocking or cheapening the quality of legal web traffic, but also of the ban on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from making any further legislations that don’t encompass just those two aspects of the internet.

The problem with this is that some of the actions that net neutrality originally disallowed would pass to be allowed, like paid prioritization. This is the practice in which a content owner pays a broadband provider to speed up their “prioritized” web traffic. Paid prioritization creates a systematic chain of people cutting and organizing the Internet into fast and slow lanes, which is against the entire ideology of what net neutrality stands for. Thus, it is perceivable to understand the stance of the opponents of Blackburn’s new bill.

Though Blackburn places the bill under the title of the repeal of the repeal of net neutrality, it may be fallacious to avid net neutrality supporters who understand the logistics behind the Internet. According to Variety, while the majority of Democrats and a large quantity of Republicans condemn her bill to be a “fake net neutrality” legislation, Blackburn, on the other hand, is optimistic about her new proposal. She, chairing a House subcommittee on communications and technology, reports that her bill aims to address what issues are in agreement by net neutrality supporters, like the prospect of free expression online in terms of blocking.

As a Republican Congresswoman, she faces the problem based on the idea that what must be tackled first are the most pressing harms that the repeal of net neutrality implicates, but her opponents call for a long-term solution that consolidates true protection. This true protection would ultimately - and only truly - provide consumers online with the guaranteed availability and accessibility to the grounds of the entirety of the internet.

<Jiseon Choi Granada Hills Charter 11th Grade>