In the freedom of western democracies, the issue of internet neutrality is an important and crucial notion that is coming under increasing threat, as both companies and governments begin to strengthen their grip on our cyberspace freedoms.
The basic idea of internet neutrality is that users should have the ability to access any web content they chose, use any applications they choose free of restrictions or limitations their internet service provider may impose. In addition, Berkley adds “that no bit of information should be prioritized over another. This principle implies that an information network such as the internet is most efficient and useful to the public when it is less focused on a particular audience and instead attentive to multiple users.”
Like China, the use of censorship could impose a threat to internet neutrality, but in many ways unlike China, the threat of blocking or prioritizing content could come from internet services providers in the west of their own free choice, and unknown to many people this is happening in democratic countries. Internet providers themselves have the ability to, prioritize or block, or even slow content to giver their services an advantage over others.
Legally, there have already been cases filed in regards to the idea and freedom of internet neutrality. In 2005, the US Federal Communications Commission actually sanctioned a rural telephone company named Madison River Communications for blocking its DSL customers from making phone calls over the internet. The industry has a whole argues that it should be able to block anything which may infringe on the broad and vague term of “quality of service.” In theory this could mean that a provider may chose to block a search engine like “Yahoo” or “Google” in favor of its own.
The industry also argues that upstarts like Facebook, Google and Yahoo have taken advantage of internet service providers capital infrastructure to make billions of dollars. The incoming AT&T CEO went as far as saying that upstarts like Google would like to “use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it.”
Just this year a landmark net neutrality court case tested open internet rules, with Verizon bringing a federal court case against Federal Communications Commission. Verizon argued that the Federal Communications Commission lacks the authority to enforce the rules they established and that provisions established by the FCC violate the companies first amendment rights of free speech.
Cases like these should bring and keep the important debate and issue of internet neutrality alive and well. Organizations in both the United States and Canada have websites devoted to the cause and public knowledge of the cause. The public must continue to be informed on this issue as the world progresses onto the new terrain of cyberspace. Otherwise the freedom of content could easily be endangered.This is especially important since private companies which can consolidate so much power and influence are rapidly moving into cyberspace and will attempt to create their own advantages in the name of profit while challenging the intellectual and user freedoms of netizens across North America.
While it is encouraging to see court cases like the 2013 Verizon case light up this issue in the public sphere, much more action needs to be done to inform the public of what the idea of net neutrality really is, the impact it has on all of us, and the threat it is now under.