Question:
What is the potential impact of the proposed Senate resolution to repeal net neutrality regulations on the public’s ability to access news and information?
The implications of a world without net neutrality for online news Web sites and consumers are immense. This ‘tollbooth’ approach to Internet access would tend to favor larger companies, which could better afford to pay the bills for access. For giant media companies such as NBC/Comcast, it would make it easier to dominate smaller Internet startups. MSNBC and Fox News could afford to pay extra for the rapid delivery of rich, interactive media. This may not be the case for larger regional news sites, or smaller hyper local news innovators.
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Net Neutrality is in many ways the free speech issue of our digital age. It is the simple idea that all bits and bytes on the internet should be treated equal and would stop any corporation or government agency from interfering with lawful Internet traffic or telling users what apps they can or can’t use. It prevents big corporations, such as Internet Service Providers, from setting up toll booths on the web that would privileged big media players over new start-ups or independent and nonprofit journalism organizations. It also fosters competition and diversity of viewpoints.
When the FCC passed their watered-down Net Neutrality rules this past December they actually endorsed discrimination online for the first time, by leaving wireless networks unprotected from Net Neutrality rules. This means they have now created two separate Internets – one with some small protections and one (wireless) with little or none. This is especially troubling given how much news and information is increasingly flowing over the mobile web.
Repealing regulations on net neutrality is almost guaranteed to limit the freedom of information currently enjoyed by users of the web. It would allow ISPs to pick and choose who would have access to their bandwidth and when they would have access to the high speeds currently required to run most Web 2.0 sites. (Imagine running some of these pages on and old dial-up connection. It would take forever!)
Any news host that cannot afford to pay the cost to use the fiber optic cables, or produces news that challenge the ISP’s financial interests, could be throttled and kept from the public eye.
This means that smaller sources of news will have to funnel their stories into the hopper of larger media outlets. As such, it seems likely that the little guy will lose journalistic control and integrity when pushing the articles forward/upward. The implications of this are pretty unlimited, and it’s one of the reasons that larger news corps don’t want to talk about it. They will benefit endlessly from a lack of neutrality and have no interest in covering it.