Ara Shirinian: It’s time to stop being neutral about net neutrality
Presidential candidate Jeb Bush pledged to end net neutrality if elected. He argued that treating the internet as a public utility prevents providers from focusing on enhancing consumers’ experiences and making investments, endangering some networks’ viability. (Creative Commons by Michael Vadon via Flickr)
By Ara Shirinian
Nov. 13, 2015 2:44 a.m.
Right now, the future of the Internet is being debated in a federal court and almost no one is talking about it.
Last year, I wrote about the Federal Communications Commission’s policies reclassifying Internet service providers (ISPs) as common carriers in accordance with Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Though the FCC’s new authority has many implications, the biggest is no doubt its enforcement of net neutrality. The simplest explanation of net neutrality is that it bans service providers from accepting payments for websites in exchange for faster speed, or from slowing down websites that compete with their own.
The case for net neutrality is simple enough; from the information available it’s something most people want. A poll conducted last year by the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication using the basic definition of net neutrality found that 81 percent of Americans support net neutrality. But, according to a Pew poll conducted in September, 39 percent of respondents couldn’t answer a multiple choice question identifying what net neutrality means.
That’s why politicians can use generic arguments against it that will still get their base excited. In September, presidential candidate Jeb Bush promised to repeal net neutrality if elected president, again citing the potential for reduced investment as the cause, mainly in an effort to cast this as a loss for President Barack Obama.
The disintegration of net neutrality has adverse effects on everyone, but impacts the generation that grew up with the Internet the most. Students need to educate themselves on these issues, which are often less complicated to understand than they originally seem. Then, they should use social media and online petitions created by companies like Google to voice their opinions about protecting Internet regulation.
But first, it’s important to address the arguments of the opposition, which ends up not being too difficult. Something trumpeted over and over again, including by presidential candidates like Bush, is that net neutrality will decrease investment by service providers.
However, since the rules were announced in February and since they took effect in June, the exact opposite has been true, with major ISPs spending more in the last year on network expansion than the year before. This empirically shows that the main argument used against net neutrality is just false.
But the facts have yet to dissuade Republicans. Earlier this week, on the heels of opposition from presidential candidates like Bush, a filing written by congressional Republicans urging the court to undo the new net neutrality rules – saying that the rules are something which should be written into law – was accepted into the record by a federal appeals court in charge of the FCC’s case.
Politicians are using something Americans usually don’t understand simply as a means to create political friction. As the intensity of the presidential election nears, students will undeniably be subjected to hollow arguments and be expected to vote along party lines instead of thinking critically about what is being said. Considering how important the Internet is for the lives of millennials, it’s definitely something they should contemplate.
Despite what students might hear, it’s not difficult to see that there is no reason why banning fast lanes and making sure service providers give all companies, big and small, access to their network, should increase their costs.
More likely, the reason for anger in Congress against the new rules relies solely on the fact that it allows them to criticize the Obama administration for something they know a large number of their voters won’t understand.
Students need to understand that if the FCC loses the ability to put any limits on what Internet providers can do, then no one will. If Congress really wanted the ability to control Internet regulation in a way that will help people, as they claim they do, they would have written a bill that does that. Instead they have done nothing more than attempt to remove the protections in place now.
That’s why the communications act exists in the first place; it is meant to help bring real protection for the communication technologies that are core to our society.
In the 1930s that was landlines. In 2015, it’s Twitter. So get online now and use your 140 characters to tell Congressional Republicans to #StopWastingOurTime.
