Reading 09 — Freedom of Speech
Net neutrality is the set of regulations passed in 2015 that essentially mandate that all Internet Service Providers treat all the content they serve equally. This means they can’t charge consumers more for a third-party service like Netflix while charging a lower price for their own products. This has been a hot topic in recent years as last fall the FCC decided to reverse the regulations put in place in 2015. The main argument for keeping net neutrality is basically that people fear if internet service providers are allowed to control their own prices they will charge consumers more for certain services. This means that they would have the ability to indirectly affect which services consumers use because they wouldn’t be able to afford the higher prices. The anti net neutrality parties, however, argue that since internet service providers have to charge each customer the same, larger content providers are getting a big break in prices. Thomas Eckert gives a metaphor to explain this: “A compact car driving down a toll road pays less than an 18-wheeler due to the extra wear and tear caused on the road. The truck would obviously benefit from a mandate requiring that everyone pay the same tolls, where the car would be penalized from the redistributed costs. In the case for net neutrality, the 18-wheeler is the large streaming entities, and they want their bandwidth cost spread around to everyone else using the internet, regardless of how much you use.”
I struggle with choosing a side in this debate. This is because I feel like I have read about directly conflicting statements from both sides of the issue so I’m not really sure what is correct. One argument I’m tempted to use is that I don’t remember any problems with internet service providers having “fast lanes” before 2015 (granted, I did not pay close attention to this topic back then), but Nilay Patel says that big telecom corporations “were already doing things like blocking apps and services from phones and excusing their own services from data caps.” However, that Marginalia blog cites a Net neutrality and consumer welfare article to describe how the original laws before net neutrality were performing: “ Between mid-2002 and mid-2008, the number of high-speed broadband access lines in the United States grew from 16M to nearly 133M, and the number of residential broadband lines grew from 14M to nearly 80M. Internet traffic roughly tripled between 2007 and 2009. At the same time, prices for broadband Internet access services have fallen sharply.” I struggle to commit to one side of the debate because there are good things that come with net neutrality such as freedom of speech, a level playing field for large and small companies alike, as well as the guarantee the internet service providers cannot alter the flow of data. However, from what I’ve read net neutrality stifles investments in infrastructure which I believe is not good at all. I have read articles comparing our internet infrastructure to the road system in the US, which does not make me think that it will be regularly upgraded. I think content providers like Netflix or YouTube that use most of the bandwidth should pay more than other services who don’t use as much.
I do think that the fair access to the internet should be a basic right. More and more of our daily life is becoming dependent on being connected to the internet, and the fact that many rural areas in the US still only have access to a dial up connection is terrible.
I think the government has to play a role in keeping a fair market. I’ll cite an example from class last week, the Google antitrust case. If there was no government regulation Google could easily hide smaller competitors products/services on their search page and not get into trouble. I don’t think this is good for innovation, so the government needs to have at least a small part in protecting the fairness of the market.
