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If You Like Your Cable Company, You’!l Love the End of
Net Neutrality
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2017-12-04 14:59:01
By the end of 2017, the internet will enter uncharted territory. Barring a
surprise vote by another Republican-appointed commissioner or an act of Congress, former telecommunications industry
lobbyist Ajit Pai will direct the Federal Communications Commission to end the policy of Net Neutrality, which requires
Internet Service Providers to treat all lawful content equally. Until 2013, when some ISPs began to charge Netflix, Hulu, and
other streaming services additional fees to deliver their content in an “internet fast lane,” Net Neutrality wasn’t an issue.
ISPs, which provided the “last mile” connecting the vast internet infrastructure to individual homes, businesses, and mobile
devices, delivered all content on an equal footing. In 2015 the Obama Administration’s FCC voted to classify internet
service as a utility like electrical power and telephone service, which meant that regulations could guarantee equality of
delivery of all lawful content — no slowdowns and no outright blocking of legal content. This freedom is about to end. With
the end of Net Neutrality, ISPs can sell packages that deliver preferred content and slow down or block competitors’ content
unless the competitor or the customer pays a premium. This would make the internet no different from a cable TV
subscription (like the cable TV subscription I cancelled last year over a dispute with Spectrum, my monopoly provider) and
would significantly raise the price of internet access. Ever since we cut the cord, my household is now paying for a
subscription to Netflix. It may be that we continue to pay our monthly fee to Netflix, along with a monthly fee to Spectrum
to actually deliver our Netflix movies to us. I certainly understand why Spectrum, Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and other
providers would want to recapture us cord-cutters. But given that these are, for the most part monopolies or oligopolies
working in collusion — and in many cases they’ve prevented municipalities from offering competing services — consumers
are essentially paying increasingly higher rent for increasingly worse service. But there’s a larger issue here, and it has to do
with the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...
On the other hand, corporations have wide latitude to control or restrict speech. We see this in shopping malls that prohibit
some forms of political leafleting (while perhaps permitting others more in line with the views of the owner) and that eject
customers wearing political t-shirts management does not like. Internet service providers unconstrained by FCC neutrality
regulations can similarly police speech using their “property.” Corporations are not the government, and there are no
protections against the corporate quashing of free expression. The current administration has already wielded its power to
reward friends, punish enemies, and outsource its propaganda functions to favored media corporations Sinclair and Fox,
which now serve as informal right-wing government broadcasting networks. Without the Fairness Doctrine, which expired
in 1986 under the Reagan Administration, no media company need broadcast an opinion its owners do not like. Without Net
Neutrality, no ISP need deliver an internet site that its owners do not like. More likely, the ISPs will do what some have done
already with their cable networks — deliver Fox for free while charging a premium for its more centrist rivals. In other
La
words, propaganda will be free. Dissenting opinions will cost extra.
Supporters of Net Neutrality cite Portugal as a model for what can happen in a non-neutral internet environment. Since I live
in Portugal part-time and use the internet heavily while I’m there, I can certainly speak to this. And I can say that however
bad things are in Portugal, they will be a lot worse in the United States. To begin with, only one mobile service provider,
MEO, offers packages similar to cable TV packages, allowing access to social media, music, movie, news, and gaming
options with an upgrade over basic phone, text, and email. Other mobile providers sell internet access based on amount of
bandwidth used; exceed your monthly cap, you pay extra regardless of what sites you visited. In addition, the non-net
neutral packages only apply to mobile service. No fiber optic services for homes and business feature “fast lane” packages,
blocking, or throttling. Finally, any attempt to slow down or block internet content in Portugal based on the political
orientation of that content would face instant public condemnation. Hardly 40 years out of a right-wing dictatorship that
strictly censored books, newspapers, television, radio, even the national music of fado, the Portuguese people are quite
sensitive to any modern-day censorship efforts. On the other hand, we in the United States have taken our freedoms for
granted. We do not know what it is like to live without them — to have our blogs shut down by the government or by private
companies working hand-in-glove with the government, to read political commentary or watch political programming in
which only one side is allowed, on every program and every outlet. So what to do, given that this government seems dead-
set on ramming through these highly unpopular measures? Number one is to defeat every single one of the administration’s
supporters in the next election, less than a year away. In the meantime, know that you will likely be inundated with pro-
administration propaganda and have a great deal more difficulty accessing dissenting voices. Number two is to support those
dissenting voices. If this were a true free-market economy, a “free speech” ISP would suddenly materialize to make a variety
of content, from Netflix movies to political websites, available on an equal basis, everywhere in the country. If that happens,
join the stampede to them and away from the corrupt, high-cost-low-quality legacy ISPs that lobbied against Net Neutrality.
And if that doesn’t happen (hint: it probably won’t, though I don’t know what the likes of Google and Amazon, who have a
lot to lose, have in terms of contingency plans), support municipal Wi-Fi and defeat politicians who’ve sought to prevent
municipalities from setting up public Wi-Fi. As taxpayers, we paid in multiple ways for monopoly ISPs to lay the cables and
fiber. What the end of Net Neutrality tells us is that it’s time to take back these important means of communication in the
modern age.
