Network Neutrality Is Dead

[Commentary] The idea that those companies that run big telecommunications networks shouldn't be able to play favorites is dead, at age 80.

First enacted in the 1934 Communications Act, the principle was very simple. Telephone companies shouldn't be able to discriminate among the traffic they carry. The U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit ruling killed it. That was one of the guiding forces when there was a telephone monopoly with the old Bell System and AT&T. It is no less necessary now. In fact, some might say it's more necessary because the big telephone, cable and wireless networks have so many more ways to play games than they did before. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has said all of the right things about wanting competition, and at this point it's not certain he would do the things necessary to get it. Little by little over the years, the pro-competitive rules, the pro-consumer rules were whittled away by the power of the telecom lobby which controls a sizable amount of votes, Democratic and Republican in the Senate and House.

That leaves the rest of us, Web users, developers, small sites, whoever. It might be said that "the people" killed some bad intellectual property legislation in 2012 (the SOPA/PIPA wars), but that isn't really the case. Momentum didn't really swing the right way until Google put up a petition that got millions of signatures within hours and someone on reddit led the way for a blackout. Are the big players necessary even to make this a fight, much less a winning effort, willing to step up again? Is anyone? Don't count on it.

[Brodsky is a Communications consultant]