The Case for Net Neutrality

Author(s): 
Publication Type: 
Other Writing
Publication Date: 
August 1, 2014

For all the withering criticism leveled at the White House for its botched rollout of HealthCare.gov, that debacle is not the biggest technology-related failure of Barack Obama’s presidency. That inauspicious distinction belongs to his administration’s incompetence in another area: reneging on Obama’s signature pledge to ensure “net neutrality,” the straightforward but powerful idea that Internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all traffic that goes through their networks the same. Net neutrality holds that ISPs shouldn’t offer preferential treatment to some websites over others or charge some companies arbitrary fees to reach users. By this logic, AT&T, for example, shouldn’t be allowed to grant iTunes Radio a special “fast lane” for its data while forcing Spotify to make do with choppier service.

On the campaign trail in 2007, Obama called himself “a strong supporter of net neutrality” and promised that under his administration, the Federal Communications Commission would defend that principle. But in the last few months, his FCC appears to have given up on the goal of maintaining an open Internet. This past January, a U.S. federal appeals court, in a case brought by Verizon, struck down the net neutrality rules adopted by the FCC in 2010, which came close to fulfilling Obama’s pledge despite a few loopholes. 

Read the full piece at Foreign Affairs