Why Net Neutrality & President Obama's Stance Matters

Originally published on Camel City Dispatch here

In what has been dubbed a political power play by some, President Obama released a statement Monday in support of net neutrality.

A video uploaded to YouTube and WhiteHouse.gov outlined the President’s plan for keeping the internet free and open. “Ever since the internet was created, it’s been organized around the basic principles of openness, fairness, and freedom. There are no gatekeepers deciding which sites you get to access, there are no toll roads on the information superhighway.

“Abandoning these principles would threaten to end the internet as we know it.”

Specifically, the President called for a four-point plan that includes the following:

No blocking. Essentially, internet service providers (ISP) like Time Warner and Comcast would be prohibited from blocking specific websites, unless that site’s content is illegal.
No throttling. Your ISP can’t intentionally slow down access to some content, or speed up other content – every bit, byte, and digit would be treated equally.
Increased transparency. While you only connect with your ISP on the so-called “last mile” of a cable line, ISPs still route traffic between you and the web through their own servers. So, essentially, making sure those connections are treated neutrally as well.
No paid prioritization. This is a big one. Services like Netflix, Pandora, and YouTube have become hugely popular over the last decade, but they’ve also required a lot of bandwidth. And companies like Verizon want a piece of that money pie. So Obama is essentially saying that ISPs shouldn’t be allowed to ask a content provider, like Netflix, to pay more simply to guarantee fewer “buffers,” or quicker load times, over the competition.

Here’s an example: Under current rules, Time Warner Cable could ask Amazon Video for extra money to guarantee top speeds. So your ‘House of Cards’ stream might be a pixelated mess, while everything on Amazon comes through in crystal-clear HD. Or maybe TWC just drops Netflix altogether. It’s a very real possibility under current (lack-of) regulations. Take it a step further, though. Verizon recently tried to launch its own video-streaming service – which essentially put an ISP and content-provider under the same roof. Without net neutrality, Verizon could have given priority to it’s own in-house service and charged 15 bucks a month, while throttling Netflix speeds so slow to make them essentially unusable. Fortunately, big red thought better.

It also keeps the internet as a pay-to-play service. So big companies who can afford the higher speeds all get those top internet fast-lanes, while your little brother’s YouTube channel, which is barely making ends meet, can’t pay enough for competitive access. Conglomerates like CNN and Fox News become the sole source of information, and Camel City Dispatch is yesterday’s news. This is why major internet application companies have come out in favor of net neutrality – names like Yahoo, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. They know that internet data manipulation is dangerous for their livelihood and could, in theory, create untouchable monopolies.

So what President Obama wants to do is give the FCC authority to make sure that doesn’t happen, by reclassifying the internet as a public utility (think electricity). It’s a form of protection that, under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, would treat the internet like a “dumb pipe” of information, rather than specific data that can be manipulated and sold. Much like how Duke Energy can’t control what devices use electricity in your house, ISPs would be providing the cable and letting you choose what to access with it.

Of course, it’s much more complicated than that – Title II was originally created back in the 1930’s after all. So Obama is asking for specific regulations that prevent antiquated laws from being applied to a 21st century technology like the internet, and is publicly decrying big government involvement with pricing. He requested the FCC “(forebear) from rate regulation and other provisions less relevant to broadband services.”

It should also be noted that net neutrality used to exist. But back in January, the DC Circuit Court said that the FCC has no authority to enforce net neutrality rules because ISPs are not currently identified as “common carriers.” Since then, millions of citizens have signed petitions in support of net neutrality, forcing the FCC to take notice. And while the FCC is currently weighing a decision on net neutrality (a hybrid approach that gives ISPs some autonomy while still playing nice with net neutrality advocates, in theory), the FCC is an independent organization and can pretty much do whatever they heck it wants. So they might side with Obama here… or they might not.

Opponents of net neutrality – big companies like Comcast and Verizon, and conservative news outlets – have denounced Obama’s position as political grandstanding. Fox News used the headline “more regulation” (a big political faux pas) to describe the issue. Verizon released a statement that called it “1930s-era utility regulation,” and said Title II “would be a radical reversal of course that would in and of itself threaten great harm to an open Internet, competition and innovation”

And opposing politicians threw their own jabs. Renewed by midterm victories, many Republicans challenged Obama’s comments by offering up unfavorable comparisons. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas tweeted, “‘Net Neutrality’ is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.” (Keep in mind Ted Cruz has previously accepted campaign funds from Comcast, and actively politicized for last year’s government shutdown, which resulted in a zero-sum “speed of government.”)

Their counter-arguments rest on laissez-faire ideologies… this notion that a free and competitive marketplace results in what’s best for everybody. And maybe that’s okay in theory. But if you, as Winston-Salem resident, can’t access essential resources to do your job on Time Warner Cable, what other ISP are you going to turn to? There’s currently no competition. And with the proposed Time Warner/Comcast merger, it would take a juggernaut to create any real marketplace disruption.

There’s a lot of white noise about this issue, a few under-the-table deals, and many (many) political ideologies struggling to remain relevant. Whatever the FCC decides, it will likely have major ramifications for our country.