In a vote of landmark importance for the regulation of the internet and data, the Federal Communications Commission passed a proposal to change the regulation of broadband service and uphold net neutrality.

“It is a historic day in the history of the internet,” Columbia Law School Professor Tim Wu said, to the BBC. “Net neutrality, long in existence as a principle, has been codified in a way that will likely survive court scrutiny. More generally, this marks the beginning of an entirely new era of how communications are regulated in the United States.”

Net neutrality is a concept in which Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide equal priority access to data streams passing through their service, no matter the company source. Such a system eliminates the idea of paid prioritization where companies can pay an extra fee to the ISPs for faster access to the consumers.

“I’m a heavy user of Youtube, Twitch, and Netflix,” sophomore Connor Redding said. “As well as Reddit and other websites that broadcast video, and by limiting the amount of bandwidth they’re allowed to have, that’s limiting me to a certain quality of product, and if the ISPs are pretty much extorting money out of these companies to produce better quality video, and if the companies are refusing to give it, I’m going to end up with a worse end product because they’re looking for more money.”

Upholding net neutrality allows all servers equal access without being shut out by other companies paying for right of first access.

“It’s a good decision because the internet should be a free and open place,” Redding said. “And if ISPs have control over whether or not we get to see certain information, then that’s giving them a power they should not have. It should be the general people’s thing to use, rather than to be controlled by a foreign entity.”

The decision could also help keep educational resources available.

“I think from an educational perspective, it’ll be a big benefit for us because it drives out a commonality among the access,” teacher Randy Brooks said. “The underlying piece that it gets to is access for all. The negative aspect, which shouldn’t hit us so much, it would hit more of the business world, would be I can’t get priority messages through; messages would start to be handled the same, we don’t have priority codes stuck on them.”

The decision allows for increased regulation while still giving consumers the ability to access things on the internet equally.

“That means I can access whatever I want at, of course, the internet speed that I’m paying for,” Redding said. “That’s understandable because the ISPs need to make money somehow, and that’s how much I’m paying for and it is over every website, then I just get that set speed and that makes sense, that means I have what I want to access to I have that control over what I want to have. I can say, “I want to go to that website,” and not have it go incredibly slow, I can access whatever website I want and it gives me the speed that I need.”