United Liberty

Net neutrality is one of the newest buzzwords around the internet and is starting to gain attention of many computer users.

So, what is net neutrality? Before I answer that question, we need to first understand how the process of getting online works. When you subscribe to a cable or DSL connection, most people believe that you are buying a direct connection to the internet. However, this is not true in that your provider serves as your go-between to all of the servers and bandwidth that makes that connection.  For that reason, your provider could (and does, to an extent) control what you can and cannot “see” and do on the internet because they have purchased and allocated bandwidth on your behalf.

Recently, various internet service providers such as Comcast and AT&T have started to suggest that they should begin to charge you for access to the most popular sites and services and this is where net neutrality comes into play. From your provider’s perspective, net neutrality is bad for business because they buy their bandwidth based on capacity–the more they need, the more it costs them.

Here’s an example: YouTube is by far the most popular site for watching and sharing videos. However, video on the internet requires a great deal of data to be transferred from one location to another. In response, the providers would like to start charging you for accessing those bandwidth heavy websites thereby reducing the load (and cost) of the bandwidth they provide and increasing their profits.

If these new fees were to be allowed under rules that could be proposed, issues of censorship arise where as a user you would be forced to pay for content you previously could access for free or lose access to that content.  In addition, your provider would have the power to cut off access to sites not deemed cost effective or for any reason they feel appropriate.

Because of this potential curtailing of freedom, the FCC has decided to write regulations to prevent this type of censorship occurring to where content cannot be charged for or blocked arbitrarily.

Most Republicans and Democrats agree that censoring the internet is wrong, however there are potential problems arising from where to draw the line from managing internet traffic fairly to crippling some services because they use lots of data or compete with the provider such as Skype.

Unfortunately, there is a great deal of disagreement in what constitutes discrimination for or against part of the internet and how that would be interpreted and applied. Some would consider these proposed rules a version of the fairness doctrine for the internet and those people would be absolutely correct in making such a conclusion.

Here’s why–initially when a law or regulation is written it is with an eye towards simplicity in what can or cannot be done and in a perfect government laws would be short, to the point, and easy to understand. But simplicity fails us for one simple reason: everyone from legislators and activist judges to ordinary citizens are constantly in search of loopholes and interpretations in order to make laws mean what they want to regardless of what they actually say. In short, the letter of the law is not the end, but rather the beginning.

Back to the point of interpreting discrimination on the internet we know from experience that rules that aren’t enforced are not really rules. Therefore, for the lawmakers to be perceived as acting in good faith these discrimination rules must be enforced.

If you thought the specter of the fairness doctrine for radio is cause for concern, the monitoring and enforcement of those rules broadly interpreted would create a bureaucracy so vast and byzantine it makes monitoring radio look easy in comparison.

Think for a moment what this could mean: anything you say could be taken down at a moment’s notice because one person disagrees with what you said or could you imagine a site devoted to a particular point of view mandated to devote half of their content to the opposition? Would a site vanish entirely because of one person pressed the wrong button for the most spurious of reasons?

Currently, the FCC is in the planning stages of taking suggestions on what those regulations say so now is the time to express your opinion on how the internet is managed.

So far, the FCC would like to maintain the internet the way it is in that data flows freely but this opinion could change if pressure from outside the agency demands they do otherwise during this time when the regulations are drafted.