The Internet was originally designed and conceived of as a ‘public’ infrastructure for enabling communications between connected users. The infrastructure was intended to be a simple pipeline that processed and delivered packets of information without regard to content, in a nondiscriminatory fashion. Until recently, this original design has been the accepted norm for telecommunications providers and users alike. However, legislation in 2004 and 2005 has created an environment in which the convergence of voice, video and data communications is changing the landscape of networked communications. Companies now have both the incentive and the regulatory ability to discriminate with regard to network content transmitted over their infrastructure. If measures are not taken soon to preserve the original design of the public Internet, it could become unrecognizable in the next 10-20 years as companies vie for the most profitable business models, including extracting premium fees for preferential treatment of some network content providers over others.

Network neutrality is the term used to talk about the open and neutral characteristics of Internet infrastructure as we have grown to know and understand it. To be more specific, neutrality sets the conditions that ensure fair competition and enables a level playing field for innovation which has been the basis for the phenomenal growth of Internet communications to date. (Wu, 2004, 83) “Openness” or “open access” refers to regulation geared to guarantee a non-discrimination regime, or neutrality among users, ideas and technologies. (Wu, 2004, 74, Coops, 2003)

The neutral and open characteristics of Internet access is being challenged in the United States by industry network owner/builders and others who want to eliminate network neutrality protections from telecommunications reform laws being considered by Congress. The following bibliographic entries are relevant to the issue of network neutrality provisions.

References:

Copps, Michael, J. 2003. The Beginning of the End of the Internet? Discrimination, Closed Networks and the Future of Cyberspace. Remarks made to the New America Foundation, Washington DC. October, 9, 2003. Available online at: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-239800A1.pdf

Wu, Tim. The Broadband Debate: A User's Guide. 3 J. on Telecomm. & High Tech L. 69 (2004). Available online at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=557330