www.nytimes.com/ had this to say:
“Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet,” Mr. Pai said in a statement. “Instead, the F.C.C. would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them and entrepreneurs and other small businesses can have the technical information they need to innovate.”
Millions of Americans live in what we call “single access” communities. There is only one television provider or one internet service provider. While metro communities do have some competition, in a lot of RedState America, there may be only one provider, unless you count your cell phone provider, or few options.
But, how, exactly, does that help persuade a conservative that Net Neutrality is still smart for the internet?
Conservatives have begun contending that Net Neutrality is a bad business model, micromanaging what business can and can’t do in how they provide a service to their community.
Let’s say, in a large part of conservative America, Time Warner/Charter, AT&T, Verizon or some other entity decided boy, they sure don’t like the reporting of Fox News. Fox News has been kind of mean to them lately. The response? They slow Fox News website up. Maybe they don’t like Rush Limbaugh or they think Alex Jones online TV show is a bandwidth suck and they just don’t like him. Well, they can slow him up or prevent you from visiting the website altogether.
What choice do you have as a consumer if Net Neutrality is repealed: none.
In fact, we’ve already had cases where providers have done exactly that.
www.eff.org/ said:
“ISPs have incentives to shape Internet traffic and the FCC knows full well of instances where consumers have been harmed. AT&T blocked data sent by Apple’s FaceTime software, Comcast has interfered with Internet traffic generated by certain applications, and ISPs have rerouted users’ web searches to websites they didn’t request or expect,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz. “These are just some examples of ISPs controlling our Internet experience. Users pay them to connect to the Internet, not decide for them what they can see and do there.”
Say that your local home owned provider in red state Nebraska, a wireless transmitter on the prairie decides it doesn’t want to carry any twitter content. They don’t like Trump. And with a flick of a switch, Twitter is inaccessible to all users on their network. Whether or not they inform someone, as Chairman Pai argues matters, is meaningless, as hundreds of their customers have no real alternative.
Companies like AT&T, Verizon and others have announced proudly their social agenda supports. What would stop them from blocking, say, all super social conservative content that goes against their stated corporate position? Remove Net Neutrality and really, nothing.
Oh, you want to run a website that attacks LGBT characters on NBC/Universal owned networks? Well, that’ll cost you more, because they can pay more than you can to make sure your website is nearly inaccessible. Nothing would stop someone from paying a provider not for them to be in the fast lane, but to ensure you are in the slow lane for traffic. Suddenly, your content is worthless.
Abandoning Net Neutrality opens up a door to the worst of possibilities on the internet.
Conservatives think tanks and googlers will respond that the expansion of Title II and past actions point out that content-based censorship can be handled by monopolistic claims. There are a few problems with this as a standard, though. In order to invoke monopolistic claims after you’ve removed net neutrality, you’d have to show that consumers had absolutely no other options. Recent changes have allowed that 3G Cell Phone service can be equated with an alternative access to broadband technology; so, even though there are many markets where there is only one real provider, the sheer existence of alternative 3G/4G cell connections lances those protections — consumers have “some sort” of choice.
In fact, in the one main case on it — AT&T blocking FaceTime, the FCC, prior to Net Neutrality, basically gave a pass to AT&T, meaning it was consumers who ended up helping to change that decision. Great, say conservatives, proof that consumers can demand change and the reason why businesses would never do something like that again, right? WRONG.
A battle-it-out with a high profile manufacturer of a product they carry is one thing, actively blocking or preventing their access. It is far more difficult for consumers to recognize when content is slowed down in delivery as to whether or not it is the provider or the website itself, and they have a harder time sorting out who to blame. Consumers are also less likely to jump to rally for, say, conservative or liberal websites that could go out of favor with third tier providers, and slowing down content, rather than blocking it, is not, in fact, a denial of service and as a result would not fall under Title II or the prior communication monopoly acts.
There is too much at risk for all of us.
- Chris Reeves 2017
