"There is little dispute that the Internet should continue as an open platform," notes the Federal Communications Commission. Yet in a curious twist of logic, the FCC has moved to upend the rules yielding that outcome, imposing "network neutrality" regulations on broadband-access providers. The new mandates purport to prevent Internet "gatekeepers" by prohibiting networks from favoring certain applications. In this comprehensive Broadside, Thomas W. Hazlett explains the faulty economic logic behind the FCC's regulations. The "open Internet"--thriving without such mandates--allows consumers, investors, and entrepreneurs to choose the best platforms and products, testing rival business models. Networks are actively (and efficiently) involved in managing traffic and promoting popular applications, making the entire ecosystem more valuable. This is a spontaneous market process, not a planned structure, and the commission's restrictions threaten to stifle innovation and economic growth.

Since its popularization in the mid 1990s, the Internet has impacted nearly every aspect of our cultural and personal lives. Over the course of two decades, the Internet remained an unregulated medium whose characteristic openness allowed numerous applications, services, and websites to flourish. By 2005, Internet Service Providers began to explore alternative methods of network management that would permit them to discriminate the quality and speed of access to online content as they saw fit. In response, the Federal Communications Commission sought to enshrine "net neutrality" in regulatory policy as a means of preserving the Internet's open, nondiscriminatory characteristics. Although the FCC established a net neutrality policy in 2010, debate continues as to who ultimately should have authority to shape and maintain the Internet's structure. Regulating the Web brings together a diverse collection of scholars who examine the net neutrality policy and surrounding debates from a variety of perspectives. In doing so, the book contributes to the ongoing discourse about net neutrality in the hopes that we may continue to work toward preserving a truly open Internet structure in the United States.

A provocative analysis of net neutrality and a call to democratize online communication This short book is both a primer that explains the history and politics of net neutrality and an argument for a more equitable framework for regulating access to the internet. Pickard and Berman argue that we should not see internet service as a commodity but as a public good necessary for sustaining democratic society in the twenty-first century. They aim to reframe the threat to net neutrality as more than a conflict between digital leviathans like Google and internet service providers like Comcast but as part of a much wider project to commercialize the public sphere and undermine the free speech essential for democracy. Readers will come away with a better understanding of the key concepts underpinning the net neutrality battle and rallying points for future action to democratize online communication.

Network neutrality regulations for the Internet have been discussed for about a decade. In Europe, recent efforts have produced a proposal by the European Commission for a network neutrality regulation. Envisaged is the introduction of a two-tiered Internet traffic regulation based on a regulatory market split be-tween the markets for "public" Internet traffic services and markets for special-ized services giving higher and ensured quality of data transmission. We argue that regulatory market splits are artificial and the proposed regulation of markets for Internet traffic services constitutes a regulatory fallacy.

An argument that the movement for network neutrality was of a piece with its neoliberal environment, solidifying the continued existence of a commercially driven internet. Media reform activists rejoiced in 2015 when the FCC codified network neutrality, approving a set of Open Internet rules that prohibitedproviders from favoring some content and applications over others—only to have their hopes dashed two years later when the agency reversed itself. In this book, Russell Newman offers a unique perspective on these events, arguing that the movement for network neutrality was of a piece with its neoliberal environment rather than counter to it; perversely, it served to solidify the continued existence of a commercially dominant internet and even emergent modes of surveillance and platform capitalism. Going beyond the usual policy narrative of open versus closed networks, or public interest versus corporate power, Newman uses network neutrality as a lens through which to examine the ways that neoliberalism renews and reconstitutes itself, the limits of particular forms of activism, and the shaping of future regulatory processes and policies. Newman explores the debate's roots in the 1990s movement for open access, the transition to network neutrality battles in the 2000s, and the terms in which these battles were fought. By 2017, the debate had become unmoored from its own origins, and an emerging struggle against “neoliberal sincerity” points to a need to rethink activism surrounding media policy reform itself.

After a decade of discussion on how to guarantee an open, sustainable internet and often intense debate regarding the Federal Communications Commission's 2009 public hearing on the application of the principles of net neutrality, on 21st December 2010 the various elements that comprise the solution to this now famous controversy were passed. This solution has not satisfied many people, and nearly everyone agrees that it will not end the debate and nor will it resolve the underlying structural problems. This book examines the source, development and viewpoints on this issue based on contributions from leading experts from the academic and business worlds in the USA and Europe who have been involved in the debate. This is a highly important book for understanding the various points of view on the very current and controversial issue of web neutrality.

Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Communications - Multimedia, Internet, New Technologies, grade: 1.6, , language: English, abstract: The term net neutrality is elusive, partly because its meaning varies depending on the speaker and associated agenda. The general perception of the term is used to describe two distinct proposed regulation related to broadband Internet providers. One proposal suggests that regulators would and enforce some regulations that would determine acceptable network management practices, as well as unacceptable degradation of disfavored internet application and antecedent content. The other argument suggest that the regulators would ban an internet access provider from signing commercial agreements with some applications and content providers in order to provide sophisticated performance enhancement technology that is essential in the support of unusually performance-sensitive contents and applications, for example, the real-time streaming of videos. The two proposals are distinct but complement each other. Most net neutrality proponents advocate the anti-blocking rule as well as close regulation of business-to-business relations between networks and content providers. These proposals are likely to be the focus of telecommunication policy for some time to come. The proposals have got the attention of Congress, who already has some bills on the topic. The President has weighed in the debate with his demand that a strong form of regulation. The papers aim to examine the anti-trust implication on net neutrality regulations.