Dis­ney + and How it Per­tains to Net Neu­tral­ity

MISHAWAKA—A cou­ple years ago, every­one was freak­ing out over the re­peal of Net Neu­tral­ity. Peo­ple thought it meant every­thing would change quickly and dras­ti­cally, but the takeover has been more sub­tle than most would imag­ine. It has gone al­most com­pletely un­no­ticed un­til re­cently. 

Dis­ney re­leased a new func­tion called Dis­ney + on Nov. 12. Dis­ney + is sim­i­lar to Net­flix and pro­vides ac­cess to every movie Dis­ney has ever had a hand in, in­clud­ing Pixar, Mar­vel, Na­tional Ge­o­graphic, Star Wars, and of course, all of the orig­i­nal and up­com­ing Dis­ney movies. Many are ex­cited about this new medium of en­ter­tain­ment with every­thing Dis­ney has to of­fer at their fin­ger­tips for the price of $6.99 per month. But all things con­sid­ered, is Dis­ney + a good thing? It is only pos­si­ble be­cause net neu­tral­ity is no longer in ef­fect, and it makes peo­ple pay for ac­cess to movies and shows that were oth­er­wise pro­vided by dif­fer­ent places al­ready and have now been taken away.  

Dis­ney + is only one of the many out­comes and one of the first no­tice­able ef­fects from the re­peal of Net Neu­tral­ity, though many may not re­al­ize what it truly means for our coun­try, and what may come next.