“Net neutrality,” a dry but crucial standard of openness in network access, began as a technical principle informing obscure policy debates but became the flashpoint for an all-out political battle for the future of communications and culture. Net Neutrality and the Battle for the Open Internet is a critical cultural history of net neutrality that reveals how this intentionally “boring” world of internet infrastructure and regulation hides a fascinating and pivotal sphere of power, with lessons for communication and media scholars, activists, and anyone interested in technology and politics. While previous studies and academic discussions of net neutrality have been dominated by legal, economic, and technical perspectives, Net Neutrality and the Battle for the Open Internet offers a humanities-based critical theoretical approach, telling the story of how activists and millions of everyday people, online and in the streets, were able to challenge the power of the phone and cable corporations that historically dominated communications policy-making to advance equality and justice in media and technology.
Abstract:The FCC's 2015 Open Internet regulations are strong net neutrality protections, but their effectiveness ultimately depends on their enforcement. The rules prevent broadband providers' blatant discrimination but leave open possibilities for less obvious but still troubling preferential treatment online. This article considers AT&T's Sponsored Data program-which charges online content providers to exempt their traffic from users' mobile broadband data caps-as an example of a subtle erosion of net neutrality that the FCC should address. While Sponsored Data provides users some relief from data caps, it also threatens to limit the reach of bottom-up creativity online through its uneven distribution model. This article argues that sponsored data cap exemptions are pernicious paid prioritization that unfairly disadvantage independent and noncommercial creators. Through a case study of AT&T's Sponsored Data, the analysis here shows how such discrimination through exemption creates conditions of inequitable online distribution by unfairly favoring those commercial enterprises that can afford to pay for this privilege. This case shows how, by installing data caps on internet access and then collecting tolls to get around them, broadband providers can leverage their bottleneck position in internet infrastructure to be powerful gatekeepers of online expression. In early 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed surprisingly strong regulations to protect "net neutrality," the principle that internet service providers (ISPs) treat
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