The rights and wrongs of internet neutrality

President Obama's forceful statement last week in favour of net neutrality has surprised and delighted many internet activists, along with major tech companies such as Google, Amazon and eBay. However, cable companies and internet service providers (ISPs) in the US have voiced trenchant opposition to the president's proposal, which brought to centre stage an argument that has been simmering for some time.

Net neutrality proposes that every internet service provider (ISP) should treat all internet content as equal. The issue is becoming more contentious as the internet develops into a primary distribution channel for high-quality video, which requires the transmission of very large quantities of data. Not coincidentally, some of the biggest ISPs are also media companies, and there is widespread concern that these companies will use their control of the data pipeline to privilege their services over those of competitors. More fundamentally, advocates argue that, without legally enforced net neutrality, the level playing field which the internet has offered for the development of new industries and new, disruptive ideas will disappear.

Obama's wishes to stop ISPs from blocking access to legal content; prevent them from "throttling" some types of Internet traffic; apply net-neutrality rules between ISPs and the rest of the internet; and ban paid prioritisation of content (where a content provider pays an ISP for faster delivery). For this to happen, he has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reclassify broadband as a common carrier utility under the same legislation that applies to telephone services

In January, a federal appeals court had rejected the FCC’s previous net neutrality rule on the grounds that the agency did not have the legal authority to regulate broadband. The reclassification would give the FCC explicit legal authority over ISPs and protection from court challenges from the telecoms industry.

Obama’s assertion that broadband access is “of the same importance, and must carry the same obligations” as services such as the telephone network is a boost for proponents of net neutrality, not just in the US but around the world. However, it almost certainly presages a drawn-out legal and political battle over the issue. It remains to be seen whether the FCC , whose chairman is a former telecoms lobbyist, will follow the president’s direction. If and when it does, cable and telecoms companies can be expected to fight reclassification through the courts, and political opposition from a Republican-dominated House and Senate is assured. However, one thing is certain; on this issue Obama is fundamentally correct. Internet access should be viewed as a public good, not as a commodity to be exploited by a handful of powerful companies. It is to be hoped the same principle will be asserted and defended in Europe and elsewhere as the net neutrality debate intensifies.