Net Neutrality: Legislation Actually Worth Following

Enter John Oliver. The Brit comedian started his career as a long-time corespondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. An undisputed fan favorite, Oliver was tapped to take the helm of The Daily Show last year when Jon Stewart took the summer off to direct a feature film. Eventually, like many before him, Oliver left Comedy Central to pursue further aspirations. Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell and Ed helms are all notable alums who launched successful careers following their stint on The Daily Show. 

HBO teamed up with John Oliver to create Last Week Tonight. Focused on political and cultural satire, Last Week Tonight is similar in principle to what Oliver was doing so well at Comedy Central. While it took a few weeks for Oliver to find a certain level of comfort in his new role, he and his writers wasted no time in creating excellent content.

This brings us to Net Neutrality. On a very basic level, Net Neutrality is the idea that all content on the internet can exist on the same level playing field. An important point that Oliver brings up in his bit is that this principle allows small businesses and start ups to have a fighting chance against much larger and well-established companies. They have the same access to consumers and their content has the same ability to influence as businesses with substantially larger budgets. 

The proposed legislation, and what the major internet/telecom companies are lobbying for, would charge companies for the speed to which their information is accessible. Major companies would need to shell out major fees to make their content easily accessible, and thus more appealing to consumers. Small business with much smaller budgets might not be able to afford this, and thus, their content is more easily lost in the trillions of pages of the internet. 

This chart features Netflix's customer streaming performance. You may notice a dip and coincidental spike related to Comcast that is not nearly as dramatic with other providers. Netflix signed a paid peering agreement with the cable company in, you guessed it, February.

This is a substantially important issue which could result in major changes to the way businesses operate for years to come. For a more in-depth look, listen to John Oliver's explanation below.