Business

Burger King Releases Net Neutrality Commercial

[YouTube/Screenshot/Public - User: BURGER KING]

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Eric Lieberman Managing Editor
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The fast food chain Burger King released a commercial Wednesday that tries to explain net neutrality rules, internet regulations imposed in 2015 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

“The repeal of Net Neutrality is a hot topic in America, but it can be very difficult to understand,” the YouTube description of the new advertisement reads. “That’s why the BURGER KING® brand created WHOPPER® Neutrality, a social experiment that explains the effects of the repeal of Net Neutrality by putting it in terms anyone can understand: A WHOPPER® sandwich.”

The primary point of the commercial is to show how upset customers get when they are forced to pay disproportionately high prices for faster burger-flipping speeds. What Burger King unintentionally demonstrates is how broadband companies likely won’t want to charge inordinate prices for their services — without essentially nationalizing the internet, which is what the now-repealed 2015 net neutrality rules would do — because the public would be so enraged.

WATCH:

Burger King argues in the video that, just like its flagship item, the internet should be the same for everyone.

Burger King | Whopper Neutrality [YouTube/Screenshot/Public - User: BURGER KING]

Burger King | Whopper Neutrality [YouTube/Screenshot/Public – User: BURGER KING]

However, the prioritization of certain connections can often be necessary, and is actually a fundamental aspect of how the internet works.

Roslyn Layton, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, argues that “the whole notion about neutral networks and all data being the same is the total opposite of 5G,” the imminent generation of wireless technology.

She continues:

If you have a thousand devices in your house, they are not going to all need the same treatment, they’ll need different treatment depending upon what the service is. Maybe [for] health sensors on your body you want to have a certain kind of treatment, and then appliances you don’t. The whole notion of the pricing and engineering for the Internet of Things, it’s not one-price-fits-all, or one-size-fits-all, it’s a highly diversified strategy.

Burger King did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment by time of publication.

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