Net Neutrality, The Boomerang That Keeps Coming Back

By Paul Grimsley

I’ve written about it before, and it is probably one of those things that is going to keep coming back into the limelight. Why? Try and imagine life without the internet — it is one of those all-pervasive technological innovations that has changed the way we live. There are people alive now who have never known a time without the internet. It is obviously a huge market.

But it is more than that — it provides a backbone for a lot of social infrastructure, and has allowed for a lot of people to create businesses and do work that they wouldn’t have been able to do without it.

Try and imagine dialing back to a time when you had dial-up. The thought of being able to sit down and stream your Amazon Prime, Hulu, or Netflix show suddenly becomes something filled with long pauses and frustration. If you can’t afford to play in the fast lane then you won’t have the same internet — this is the fear of those who have been following the back and forth between the FCC and companies like Verizon and AT&T,

The other fear is that it really hits at the first amendment rights in terms of these companies policing content, slowing certain sites, and blocking others. The level playing field would no longer be level. As a marketing company that derives a lot of business from the internet, Buzzazz would suffer. Even if you can afford to pay you are going to suffer. It is a move that, for a lot of businesses, is going to seem anti-business. ISPs would possibly be banking it, or not — this strikes fundamentally at what the internet has become, and threatens the way it functions.

The open internet gives us so much more — so much variety. The internet as it is isn’t purely fiscally driven. I believe I read somewhere that someone suggested that the Internet be added to the list of human rights.

I got into this whole subject with someone the other day and they said to me — Well, phones are expensive, aren’t they? Prohibitively so in some cases, and no one is without a phone, are they? It’s hard to function without them. So, if they decide to jack the prices for certain services through the roof, people are going to find a way to pay for it.

I couldn’t argue that this viewpoint wasn’t true, but is it right? It’s a hard one. I don’t think many people are stealing their internet, and I can’t imagine that any of the big ISPs are really losing money on the venture, but some people are probably absorbing the costs of others who don’t pay as much to get their access. The whole Republican platform seems to be about making sure that people are only paying for themselves and aren’t subsidizing others … if you can’t afford it you don’t get it. Now, if you take the opposite stance on this, can you extend the claim of the social contract to cover something like internet access? Is the fact that it is so integral to so much of what we do in our lives enough to grant it some special status that needs protecting?

If you cut the access that people are going to be able to get, if you price people out of the market (because no one that I have read is advocating getting internet for free in response to the talks of deregulation), then what kind of world is going to result from that? How is it going to affect the market? Is it going to adversely impact things like the gig economy? I know a lot more people are accessing the internet via their phones, so maybe that will offset the restrictions on home internet? Probably not though, given that the main ISPs came out of the communications market and have mobile services locked down too.

It won’t completely destroy the internet, of course — it will just severely alter it, and it will probably atomize and blow apart a lot of those cross-network social groups that have been a mainstay of the interwebs through the 2000s. Netflix and Amazon and Facebook will be pushing back on it, as will Etsy, Vimeo, Twitter, Reddit and Google. The organizers against the moves include advocacy groups Fight for the Future, Demand Progress and Free Press, and Defend Net Neutrality banners are turning up everywhere, like at the top of this page.

Because it represents a lot of money, because it represents a lot of freedom and creativity, this is an important battle — an interesting one to be fought under a President who owes so much of his popularity to the internet.