SYLVAN LANE , The Hill; The return of net neutrality
"The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 3-2 along partisan lines to restore net neutrality rules, barring broadband providers from blocking, throttling or prioritizing internet traffic."
"The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission proposed common-sense privacy rules this week that would limit what broadband companies are allowed to do with the Internet browsing history and other personal information of consumers... Under the proposal by the chairman, Tom Wheeler, cable and phone companies would be allowed to use personal data for things like billing and pitching more expensive versions of services that customers are already using. Customers could opt out of marketing for other services provided by their broadband companies. And the companies would have to get permission from their customers before they could do more with the data, like selling it to advertisers. Another rule would require companies to protect the data and notify customers, the commission and law enforcement agencies if the information was stolen."
"The suggestion by Andreessen that India, with its history, should somehow be pro-colonialism was treated by many as absurd. In centuries gone by, colonialism was about exploitation of resources. In the modern world, it's digital - moving in, setting up companies and building insurmountable user bases before any other company can. That's arguably an extreme interpretation of the purpose of Free Basics - but it's the argument made by local businesses to India's telecoms regulator. An Indian social network wouldn't stand a chance against free Facebook, they said, and websites that are not part of the Free Basics scheme would lose out. The regulator agreed when it ruled in favour of net neutrality. As did many Western onlookers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which campaigns for an open internet, said Facebook was doing what it could to open up the Free Basics scheme to local companies, the inherent flaw of the program was that Facebook remained the sole gatekeeper."
"There are implications for other countries, too. Part of Facebook’s strategy for global expansion just failed, or at least suffered a serious blow, in a key country. Here’s how Kevin Roose, a writer at Fusion, puts it: “If a group of activists could successfully reframe Free Basics as an insidious land grab, rather than an act of corporate largesse, and mobilize a country against it, what’s to stop them from resisting elsewhere?” And as Ingrid Burrington wrote for The Atlantic in December, various mobile carriers in the United States offer “free” video streaming as a way to attract customers—free, in that data use doesn’t count toward a person’s monthly allotment. “It really seems too obviously out of line to be true,” Burrington wrote, “Mobile carriers are literally partnering with large media companies to subsidize data-devouring streaming services, while what might be considered the ‘open Internet’ remains a paid service.” In a Facebook post on Monday, Zuckerberg wrote that he is “disappointed” but committed to keep working toward connectivity goals in India. In his earlier essay, for the Times of India, he was less restrained: “Who could possibly be against this?”"
"Mark Zuckerberg is learning the hard way that philanthropy is never as straight-forward as it seems. Facebook’s crusade to bring basic free Internet to people in lower-income countries without web access reached India in February 2015. In a triumphant Facebook post, Zuckerberg announced that the initiative, Internet.org, had launched in India, “giving people in six Indian states access to free basic internet services for health, education, jobs and communication.” Less than a year later, Internet.org hasn’t gone over as well as Zuckerberg had hoped. On Thursday, hundreds of people gathered at a Telecom Regulatory Authority of India forum in India’s capital to discuss whether the initiative should be shut down, according to the Wall Street Journal. Advocates for net neutrality argue that the free service, which offers access to only some websites, is “poor internet for poor people,” forcing users to only access parts of the web that are in Facebook’s best interest."
"If there was a single moment when the winds seemed to shift against Comcast, it came in November, when President Obama released a video on the White House website in which he spoke about the future of the Internet. For the first time, Mr. Obama, who had long offered support for the idea of net neutrality but had always stopped short of suggesting how it might be achieved, was unambiguously clear about what he wanted. He called on the Federal Communications Commission to adopt “the strongest possible rules” to regulate the Internet. “For almost a century, our law has recognized that companies who connect you to the world have special obligations not to exploit the monopoly they enjoy over access into and out of your home or business,” he said. “It is common sense that the same philosophy should guide any service that is based on the transmission of information — whether a phone call or a packet of data.”... It meant that a lot of Americans living in rural areas no longer had what qualified as high-speed Internet access — making Comcast’s already large share of the broadband market considerably larger."
"The great digital divide that President Obama repeatedly has pledged to fix could grow even wider, after a recent federal court ruling put the president's promise of leveling the tech playing field in jeopardy... Last year, the president pitched a plan aimed at making sure "99 percent of students across the country" would receive access to high-speed broadband and wireless Internet at their schools within the next five years. During his 2011 State of the Union address, he stressed the need to upgrade all Americans. "This isn't just about faster Internet or fewer dropped calls," Obama said at the time. "It's about connecting every part of America to the digital age." But on Jan. 14, a federal appeals court struck down the Federal Communications Commission's Open Internet Order pertaining to so-called "net neutrality." The decision paves the way for Internet service providers to potentially block any website or app of their choosing... Barbara Stripling, president of the American Library Association, argues that by allowing ISPs to preferentially charge for a tiered access, not only will public libraries suffer, but so will the communities that rely on them. She believe the hardest hit would be school children in grades K-12. "Schools, public and college universities rely upon public availability of government services, licensed databases, job-training videos, medical and scientific research, and many other essential services," she wrote in a Jan. 16 opinion piece on Wired.com."
