Category: Mass Communication Law

Ars Technica posts about the latest news in Net Neutrality (Waxman’s net neutrality compromise: solution or last gasp?). What’s interesting here is that they’re (finally?) calling it what proponents have been essentially asking for — classifying ISPs as “common carriers.”

We asked the FCC whether the agency’s latest net neutrality proposal, which would subject ISPs to some common carrier provisions, is still in the game.”All options remain on the table,” came the official reply. The problem is that “the table” is starting to shrink when it comes to open Internet enforcement—something along the lines of a small TV dinner tray, if that. And whatever entrees still sit upon on its surface at this point won’t be taken up at the FCC’s next Open Commission meeting, scheduled for Thursday October 14.

What the heck is a common carrier?  Wikipedia isn’t much help in describing it, but this site does much better (especially the parts about “discrimination” and “interconnection”).

I think when put in this way, it’s easier to understand why Net Neutrality isn’t an attempt to “regulate the Internet.”

Engadget recently interviewed Columbia professor, Tim Wu on the subject of Internet Neutrality. He mentioned a few things that may have been alluded to before, but perhaps with a more insightful turn of the phrase.

Once you have the right to block [access], you have the right to block speech. This is a country that cares about free speech, and people should be should be suspicious of gatekeepers getting in the way of what they want to get to.

This was, I think the issue that originally united people from across the spectrum, and has been an aspect that has been downplayed lately. The point that Tim is perhaps trying to make here is that, while the government is constitutionally obligated to protect free speech, telecommunications corporations are not. To ensure that we can read, see, and say what we want on the Internet, we need Neutrality.

There’s an effort to replace the norms of this thing [heartily pounds his iMac computer]: the openness, the original ideas of the original computer generation people, to give the power to the people — to replace it with the norms of the telephone company.

Those that don’t know their telecommunications history might not be aware of how vigorously the industry fought against their customers’ being able to hook unapproved devices onto their network. Had that battle not taken place, modems would have been provided by the telephone company and online access would never have been as cheap as it was in the dial-up days. Anyone who has tried to (legally!) unlock a cell phone knows that this battle is still very much taking place.

[Don’t] get carried away with the convenience [of these devices] and forget that you’re dealing with issues of speech, of innovation, and the right to tinker — things that we’ve taken for granted in the computer world. …
We are tool using animals. These are our tools… We need the rights to these things — they’re our ‘swords.’

I’m so glad that Tim brought up our right to tinker, and explained the rationale in such a clear way. Geeks like to use tools, and we don’t like being told how to use them. Efforts to minimize these efforts are met with fierce resistance because the curiosity that drives our tool use and tinkering is the very fuel that has driven innovation.