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.

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.

The ways in which Internet traffic is managed have direct consequences on Internet users’ rights as well as on their capability to compete on a level playing field. Network neutrality mandates to treat Internet traffic in a non-discriminatory fashion in order to maximise end users’ freedom and safeguard an open Internet. This book is the result of a collective work aimed at providing deeper insight into what is network neutrality, how does it relates to human rights and free competition and how to properly frame this key issue through sustainable policies and regulations. The Net Neutrality Compendium stems from three years of discussions nurtured by the members of the Dynamic Coalition on Network Neutrality (DCNN), an open and multi-stakeholder group, established under the aegis of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

This book explains the concept of net neutrality, its history since 1999, engineering, policy challenge, legislation and regulation, dividing it into its negative/"lite" and positive/"heavy" elements. He compares national and regional legislation and regulation of net neutrality from aninterdisciplinary and international perspective. He also examines the future of net neutrality battles in Europe, the United States and in developing countries such as India and Brazil. He explores the case studies of Specialized Services and Content Delivery Networks for video over the Internet,and zero rating or sponsored data plans. Finally, he offers co-regulatory solutions based on FRAND and non-exclusivity.This book is a must-read for researchers and advocates in net neutrality debate, and those interested in the context of communications regulation, law and economic regulation, human rights discourse and policy, and the impact of science and engineering on policy and governance.

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.

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Miscellaneous, grade: 1,3, University of Mannheim, language: English, abstract: In December 2017, the net neutrality regulation of the US was repealed. One year later, evaluations of the consequences show an immense bandwidth. Some find that the (American) internet did not change at all or even improve because of the legal change, citing spurious relationships such as increased internet speed rates (Moran 2018). Others see very concrete negative consequences, for example that the promises of ISPs about more network investment, lower prices and no negative traffic discrimination were not kept (Sohn 2018). And research conducted in 2018 using the app Wehe concluded that in their tests, “nearly every” US cellular ISP (internet service provider) throttles traffic, meaning setting a limit on the available bandwidth for at least one streaming video provider - before and after the repeal of the law took effect (Choffne 2019). So what can be inferred from the ‘natural experiment’ with net neutrality regulation in the US by first introducing and then negating it again? On the one hand, the fact that the debates sparked primarily in the US at different points of time triggered similar actions in other parts of the world shows the importance of the question. As average citizens are usually not too well informed about or involved in the shaping of internet governance, the massive mobilization of civil society that led for example in the US (2014 and 2017), Brazil, the EU and India to thousands of contributions on public policy consultations is even more striking (Marsden 2017). With an ever increasing demand for more bandwidth and rising numbers of internet users especially in developing countries, not only the topic of net neutrality will become even more salient but users will come to realise this salience. On the other hand, the content of the debates and the number of countries without net neutrality measures in place (Dynamic Coalition on Net Neutrality 2018) shows relatively small progress since the beginning of the century. Reasons for that are the lack of empirical evidence for common claims or about the impact of introduced regulations as well as the missing link between economic, social, technological, political and human rights based arguments in the discussions (Marsden 2017). But one of the main reasons is probably lacking awareness among policymakers and national stakeholders how pressing the issue is. In the following I try to address those challenges by asking if and when there should be regulations on net neutrality.