Net Neutrality Is Just the Beginning

[Thaddeus]

Net Neutrality Is Just the Beginning
https://jacobinmag.com/2017/11/net-neutrality-fcc-ajit-pai-monopoly

In the heady days of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, many trumpeted the emancipatory potential of the internet. They spoke of networks and hive minds, crowdsourced revolution and livestreamed liberation. But the internet, like everything else, is subject to market discipline and vulnerable to privatization — and with each new victory for the American telecommunications oligopoly, that digital optimism fades further from view.

Last week, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai announced that his agency will be repealing the hard-won net neutrality protections instituted in 2015 by the Obama administration. To understand what net neutrality is and why it matters for the Left, Jacobin’s Meagan Day spoke to Victor Pickard, associate professor of communication at the University Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School, whose research focuses on internet policy and the political economy of media.

Net neutrality protections are essentially safeguards that prevent internet service providers (ISPs) from interfering with the internet. Net neutrality gives the FCC the regulatory authority to prevent ISPs like Comcast and Verizon from slowing down or blocking certain types of content. It also prevents them from offering what’s known as paid prioritization, where an ISP could let particular websites or content creators pay more for faster streaming and download times. With paid prioritization an ISP could shake down a company like Netflix or an individual website owner, coercing them to pay more in order to be in the fast lane.

Net neutrality often gets treated as a sort of technocratic squabble over ownership and control of internet pipes. But in fact it speaks to a core social contract between government, corporations, and the public. What it really comes down to is, how can members of the public obtain information and services, and express ourselves creatively and politically, without interference from massive corporations?

Read the rest here: https://jacobinmag.com/2017/11/net-neutrality-fcc-ajit-pai-monopoly

[SharonAnn]

1. I see it as a utility. No favored uses.

[-je]

2. did you contact your representatives and tell them that?