Network Neutrality 101 - Why the Government Must Act to Preserve the Free And Open Internet

The Internet has become a deeply ingrained in the lives of most Americans. It looms so large, in fact, it is easy to imagine that it is immune to change — that it will always remain the free and open medium that it is now. But there are no such guarantees. The Internet is a human institution, operated by real individuals and companies, and like most human institutions it is not static and unchanging. In fact, the history of the Internet as a mass public communications medium has been marked by two stages — and ongoing changes to the underlying architecture of the Internet, combined with a recent landmark court decision, may now be bringing us into a third stage. Read More...

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION	3
An Issue of Free Speech	4
I. The Threat	4
ISPs Have the Technological Ability to Interfere With Internet Traffic	4
ISPs Have the Incentive to Interfere With Internet Traffic	8
Abuses are Not Theoretical - They Have Already Happened	9
Innovation Will Suffer if Network Neutrality Dies	11
The Push to Control Applications	12
A Battle for Control	12
II. The FCC's Challenge	14
1. The Dial-Up Era	15
2. The Broadband Era	16
3. A New Era of Filtering?	17
FCC Enforcement of Network Neutrality	18
Network Neutrality Still in Effect Due To Public Pressure, Not Competition	19
III. The Solution	21
The FCC Must Reclassify Broadband Services	21
Network Neutrality is the Status Quo	22
Limits on the Powerful to Protect Freedom for All	23
NOTES	24