Everyone who is reading this has communicated using the internet. Yes, you, with that mouse in your hand and your eyes moving on a screen. You are looking at the projection of light that creates letters that create words, which form sentences, which represent ideas, which appear in your brain. The internet allows a world wide access to content and the most powerful communication network in human history. Any student knows the worth of the internet, from when you check your Twitter, watch Netflix on a rainy day, or save your grade by using Spark Notes.
Connection to this telecommunication hive has become a necessity in the modern world, residing in the age of information. Businesses rely on the internet for corporate infrastructure; it has gone far beyond simple online buying and selling (e-commerce). Stocks are traded on the online world; shipments are organized and monitored on a global scale.
Revolutions in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela are organized using peer-to-peer communication. Nations like China, Cuba, Russia, and North Korea feel threatened by this power so much that they censor sites and prevent accesses to parts of the internet from their citizens. YouTube entertains hundreds of millions. Khan Academy offers free education to anyone who can connect to it. Wikipedia contains a summary of all human knowledge.
Connection to this mass communication network is imperative to obtain the full value of living in the modern developed world.
In the United States, access to this network is primarily given through the use of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). These are usually privately owned telecommunication and telephone companies such as Comcast and AT&T. These companies offer connection to the world’s largest communication network for a price.
Normally, a customer pays the ISP for the base connection, allowing access to the internet, and every site on it equally.
However there is a growing fear that broadband providers are going to start restricting access to particular cites, unless the customer pays a fee. This brings up the issue known as Net Neutrality, which is “the principle that ISPs should treat all data on the internet equally, not discriminating or charging by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication.” The term was coined by Columbia media law professor Tim Wu.
The idea of the internet can be presented as a series of interconnecting tubes, each one leading to new sites, by using a common browser service such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, or Firefox. The idea of Net Neutrality is that, once a customer pays for connection to the internet, they should be allowed to access any site. There is a growing fear that ISPs will start blocking individual sites, unless the customer pays an extra charge for those sites.
This will create site packages, much like channel packages in television services, where you have access to particular channels, and the cost of the service increasing as you add channels, each having a particular value. Similarly, the customer will pay for access to a number of certain sites, rather than the full access to the open network that currently is the internet. Sites would also have to pay broadband providers to allow usage on their networks. This would mean that sites and companies could effectively out-bid one another for better access, and a wider audience.
On February 23, 2014, Netflix announced a deal with Comcast, the largest ISP in The New York Times announced this as “a milestone in the history of the Internet, where content providers like Netflix generally have not had to pay for access to the customers of a broadband provider.” This sets a precedent which other companies may follow.
In 2010 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began the Net Neutrality rulemaking process. The FCC was placed in charge of regulating internet activity, namely, in Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation, to “Shield children from potentially offensive material, and ensure that unwanted speech does not enter one's home.” This ruling removed the FCCs power to effectively enforce any sort of regulation on restricted service to customers. The FCC tried to issue an “Open Internet Order” in which was “ to clarify high-level, flexible rules of the road for broadband to ensure that no one—not the government and not the companies that provide broadband service—can restrict innovation on the Internet.” However the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on January 14, 2014 in Verizon vs. FCC rejected the bulk of the Open Internet Order declaring it a threat to internet innovation and openness. It was decided that no government agency had the authority to issue regulations on the internet, unless expressly granted in law, which the FCC is limited in ability.
The Courts will most likely support the precedent set in Verizon vs. FCC, unless legislation was passed in congress in support of Net Neutrality. This is unlikely to happen, as large broadband service providers will lobby against any such action.
So, the only thing left to stop the broadband service providers from gaining ground is public opinion. These companies don’t want to upset consumers, who are the ones who pay for the service. If they feel that restrictions on site access may cause a drop in company revenue rather than a rise, they will not move in that direction. It is up to the market base consumer to decide if they are willing to be content with possible restrictions on sites by broadband providers.
