Without the FCC regulations, internet communication could be gated by ISPs. Net neutrality makes all internet connections equal. Caelin Bragg
Leslie Pierson
Reference & Instruction Librarian
“The Library Bill of Rights states that we should have equal access to information from all viewpoints. If we look to other countries like Portugal, we see that net neutrality is splitting the internet into packages that limit viewers’ freedom of access, so the situation may be problematic.”
Jerrodd Vogt
Social Work major
“I’d probably say that I don’t think [ISPs] should be able to [control internet usage]. … It’s more of a person’s choice rather than a provider to choose for you.”
Photos by Caelin Bragg & Cat Gonzales
Caelin Bragg
Lantern Staff
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took a controversial vote on Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017, which ended 3-2 in favor of ending net neutrality.
The vote sought to undo the previous vote in 2015, which also ended 3-2, that put internet service providers (ISPs) under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed the FCC to regulate ISPs as public utilities.
The reclassification of ISPs as public utilities in 2015 gave the FCC the legal right to regulate them as they saw fit. Without this, ISPs are allowed to run themselves with little oversight.
“What we’ve decided is that we need to restore the light-touch, market-based framework that started in the 1990s,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a video after the vote. “These are the rules that are best guaranteed to preserve a free and open internet and to generate the kinds of network investment that are critical for bringing Americans onto the right side of the digital divide.”
It should be noted that Pai was one of the five in the original 2015 vote before he was appointed chairman, and he voted against reclassifying ISPs as public utilities.
Many internet-based organizations took protest with the FCC’s planned vote, saying it would give ISPs too much control over customers’ access to the internet. Through a “Net Neutrality Day of Action” earlier in the year on Monday, June 12, 2017, they urged citizens to contact the FCC in support of net neutrality.
“Thanks in part to net neutrality, the open internet has grown to become an unrivaled source of choice, competition, innovation, free expression and opportunity,” said in a blog post by Google. “And it should stay that way.”
CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg also voiced support for net neutrality through his Facebook account.
“Net neutrality is the idea that the internet should be free and open for everyone,” Zuckerberg said. “If a service provider can block you from seeing certain content or can make you pay extra for it, that hurts all of us and we should have rules against it.”
In an article posted by The Verge, other companies of note voicing support during the Net Neutrality Day of Action included Twitter, Netflix, Amazon, Reddit, Pornhub and Spotify among many others.
Many ISPs say they will continue to enforce net neutrality on their own, but there is very little incentivizing them to keep those promises.
“I don’t see any reason ISPs wouldn’t just tell people, ‘hey, we’re no longer going to abide by net neutrality in this particular way,’” Blake Reid, director of the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic at the University of Colorado Boulder said, as reported by Ars Technica.
According to the FCC’s bi-annual Internet Access Services Report, nearly all households in mid-2016 had access to at least two ISPs with very basic internet. Only a little under a half of households had more than one ISP available who offered 25Mbps download and three-Mbps upload. When reaching higher speeds than that, half do not have any access to an ISP and only 12 percent had more than one choice.
