Ask an Internet entrepreneur about the current state of our country’s broadband Internet, and you’ll probably get an animated response about the battle between content producers and service providers; a Sparta-esque fight led by the embattled masses rising up against discriminatory practices that threaten the freedom of the Internet. It’s practically Armageddon.
Ask anyone under the age of 25, and they’ll probably tell you that the Internet is working just fine, thank you very much.
This is not meant to paint an anti-populist view of our nation’s young people (you’ll find folks of all ages who echo their sentiments), but rather to illustrate an important point: we, the “Internet generation,” are at risk of losing the platform as we know it. We’ve gone through the last ten years watching our peers commandeer new technology, turning up their noses at the Internet bubble of ’99 and developing some of the most innovative, fast-growing companies anywhere, much less on the Internet. This technology is ours. But if we don’t do something about the direction of broadband policy, there may never be another Mark Zuckerberg.
The reason that Facebook was able to rise to prominence – not to mention other powerhouses like Google, Yahoo, and Hotwire – was that the Internet was devoid of gatekeepers. No third party was telling users which sites to visit or controlling their access. The power to decide which Internet services rose and which sunk has been in the hands of content consumers and producers like you and me. We’ve been building blogs, Twittering our thumbs off, and patronizing online businesses to keep them afloat. Sure, our broadband providers do us a great service by connecting us to one another, but they don’t amount to much more than a glorified, digitized tin-can phone. They give us what we want, we pay them $40-odd dollars per month, and everyone is happy.
Try to tell that to the FCC. They’ve decided that broadband providers do much more – that they provide content, like a cable TV company, rather than just a connection, like a telephone company. And as a result, companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable are free to treat their Internet customers just like they do their cable TV customers. Want to access all parts of the Internet freely? Surprise: it’s not your right. Want to come up with a new, innovative Web 2.0 technology? Surprise: you’re not guaranteed that everyone will be able to access it.
It’s scary enough to think that you could be charged disproportionately for Internet services as a consumer, but it’s scarier yet that these broadband providers could use their power to stifle innovation. Comcast, for example, owns a litany of small companies that it has either developed or purchased. What if you come up with a better, more efficient business that competes with one of their interests? Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you. As if it isn’t enough to start an online empire from your dorm room, our friends in the Telecom industry would like to have a word with you.
Late last year, Comcast owned up to limiting the speeds at which their customers could access certain services online, a blatant violation of Network Neutrality rules. They defended their actions by highlighting the particular service that was controlled: peer-to-peer file sharing providers like BitTorrent. Largely considered to be a hotbed for illegal file trading, they considered limiting open access of these controversial platforms to be a defensible move.
But it doesn’t matter that they were limiting access to BitTorrent. It could just as easily have been a search provider, an online store, or your Internet startup. The point is that they were doing it to begin with, and that our current regulations  give them the opportunity to do so. Comcast’s main justification was that throttling traffic to BitTorrent was done in the best interest of customers who didn’t want their service interrupted by “bandwidth hogs.” But whatever the reasoning, it was still their decision as to what constituted a reasonable limit on Network Neutrality.
If you have your doubts, you’re not alone. It’s imperative that the innovators of tomorrow step up and engage in these issues; the Obama administration has vowed to support Net Neutrality legislation, but the Telecom lobby won’t go down without a fight. While the debate is often considered esoteric and inaccessible, in practice it can be distilled down to the fact that the future of online innovation hinges on the enforcement of a free and open Internet. Anything short of that, and we’re in for a very bumpy ride.
This is a guest blog from Zach Pentel, an Online Communications Consultant at Campus Progress and a Master’s candidate in Communication, Culture & Technology at Georgetown University.