© 2024
Local NPR for the Cape, Coast & Islands 90.1 91.1 94.3
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Science And The Death of Net Neutrality

Some scientists worry they will have less access to large data sets now that net neutrality is gone.
NOAA (http://bit.ly/2K0YcWE)
Some scientists worry they will have less access to large data sets now that net neutrality is gone.

It’s official – the net neutrality rules put into place by the FCC in 2015 went away on April 23 after being repealed by the Trump Administration in December.

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.

Most of the controversy about the decision centered on the impact the changes will have on residential internet customers or small businesses.

But some in the science community have voiced concern that data-intensive research could suffer, and that could have impacts for all of us.

“I spoke with a meteorologist who told me that he relies on the internet for all of his work,” said Ari Daniel, Senior Digital Producer for NOVA. Daniel recently looked into the possible impacts of the net neutrality rule change on science.

“He’s worried that if he doesn’t choose to pay an extra fee…it could impact his ability to get access to weather and climate data sets that are particularly voluminous.”

Others who spoke to Daniel said they feared the government would limit or even block scientific sites that offer politically sensitive information, such as climate change data. Daniel points out that this is hypothetical.

“There’s no evidence that companies would do this kind of thing,” he said.

This means that scientists are just like the rest of us -- waiting to see what the death of net neutrality really means. 

--

Here is a video that Ari Daniel created about the impacts of net neutrality on science:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weYSSCPLxDI

Stay Connected
Elsa Partan is a producer and newscaster with CAI. She first came to the station in 2002 as an intern and fell in love with radio. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. From 2006 to 2009, she covered the state of Wyoming for the NPR member station Wyoming Public Media in Laramie. She was a newspaper reporter at The Mashpee Enterprise from 2010 to 2013. She lives in Falmouth with her husband and two daughters.