Topic Proposal: Internet Censorship and Net Neutrality

Internet censorship has been quite an issue since the early days of the World Wide Web. In the early days of the Internet censorship was primarily focused on restricting access to pornographic content. This was a major issue that even spawned the Children’s Online Protection Act, which was a bill that would have forced public institutions to run content filtering software to shield inappropriate content. Today Internet censorship is a much more nuanced issue. Major telecommunication companies want the ability to treat Internet traffic differently. This goes against the early principle of “Net Neutrality”, which made networks treat all Internet traffic equally. Many watchdog groups fear that this prioritization could be used as an indirect censorship mechanism.