Lauren Frayer

It began as an academic subject with a wonky name — network neutrality. But at its heart, the issue was simple: Internet service providers should treat all content equally. Within a few years, the phrase — shortened to the slightly less-wonky net neutrality — became a rallying cry for Silicon Valley technology companies, liberals and online free-speech advocates.

For broadband companies and free-market conservatives, net neutrality became code for a government meddling in the vibrant Internet economy. Now, after some bizarre pop culture moments, an embrace by a young senator on his way to the presidency, three major court rulings and more than 4 million public comments (and counting) to federal regulators, the term has become part of the online and political lexicon.

[Commentary] If you are an advertiser, Web publisher, or developer, there is no real competitive choice. You have to use Google for search advertising and Facebook for social advertising if you want to reach the global Internet audience. And if you're a global seller of goods and services, you have to sell wholesale through Amazon, because it offers access to several times more online buyers than any other online retailer. Some will object and say these cloud network providers (CNPs) are not Internet network providers, in part because they are network neutrality allies.

But like Internet service providers, these CNPs lease or own vast networks of fiber and undersea cable connections between their data centers, encryption proxy networks, and video distribution nodes in most every country in the world. In sum, the big four ISPs are not uniquely powerful Internet networks. The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that Internet giants are vastly more powerful in nearly every dimension.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and chairman of NetCompetition]

[Commentary] We may have a gut-instinct to protect our privacy, but we are increasingly are also willing to trade that data for either convenience or money. As a professor of IT, business analytics, and marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, I have collaborated with telecom providers, advertisers, and mobile-app developers to design massive real-world field experiments to understand just how quickly consumers are willing to give up their real-time location data to get personalized discounts.

[Anindya Ghose is Professor of IT, business analytics, and marketing at New York University's Stern School of Business]

President Donald Trump's former campaign adviser, Roger Stone, claims he "had to kill" an "insane effort" by Fox News host Sean Hannity to become White House chief of staff. "Sean Hannity and his lackey Bill Shine blocked me from Fox because I blocked Sean's insane effort to become @realDonaldTrump [White House chief of staff]," Stone tweeted May 2.

Shine resigned from Fox News as its co-president on May 1 amid criticism of his handling of sexual harassment claims. Hannity quickly responded to Stone, denying he ever asked for consideration for the job, which was awarded to former Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. "Roger, with all due respect, I NEVER EVER ASKED to be considered for any WH job, nor would I ever have accepted, nor is that my skill set," Hannity tweeted.

[Commentary] The message from America’s highest official — that the world’s most professional and trusted media outlets are malicious frauds, that facts and fakeries are equivalent, and that press access to policymaking and diplomacy must submit to the whims of the powerful — represent a set of values that could undermine democracy. As every parent, corporate CEO, and Fox News staffer knows, values are set at the top.

Regardless of how he treats reporters behind closed doors, President Donald Trump has signaled publicly that it’s okay to play nasty with the press. The relationship between the media and the state is an uneasy truce; Trump has offered public officials license to rewrite the terms as they see fit.

[Suzanne Nossel is executive director of the Pen American Center]

[Commentary] Former Motherboard editor Ben Makuch has been pursued by the Canadian government since 2014 for doing his job. For nearly three years, our colleague and friend Ben Makuch has had the full weight of Canada's intelligence agencies, federal government, and court systems bearing down on him for the crime of committing journalism.

While Ben's case has been widely covered in Canada, it has flown under the radar of the Trump-obsessed American press. But what happened with Ben is part of a global trend to prevent the free spread of information by governments that espouse democratic values and supposedly champion an open society.

Sen Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said the way that Federal Communications Chairman Ajit Pai introduced his plan to roll back network neutrality may have skirted the law.

“He sounded more like a political person taking a political position than someone who was going to really inquiry into the best path forward,” said Sen Schatz. “I think it is legally consequential.” Sen Schatz said the FCC chairman may have violated a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” (NPRM) statute by appearing to take a clear position on a proposal that hasn't even been considered. The statute states that the FCC must first consider public comment before taking a specific position on a policy. “They are supposed to receive public comment. They are supposed to establish a public record,” Sen Schatz said. “You would never have anybody in judiciary announcing their position, declaring that they will ‘win in the end,’ that ‘this is a fight and they intend to win it.’"

“It’s for others in the litigation space to figure out whether there’s something there or not. But the fact that he is announcing the outcome in advance seems contrary to the statute.”

[Commentary] Every year, the internet gets a little less fair. The corporations that run it get a little bigger, their power grows more concentrated, and a bit of their idealism gives way to ruthless pragmatism. And if Ajit Pai, the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gets his way, the hegemons are likely to grow only larger and more powerful.

At the moment, the internet isn’t in a good place. The Frightful Five — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent company — control nearly everything of value in the digital world, including operating systems, app stores, browsers, cloud storage infrastructure, and oceans of data from which to spin new products. A handful of others — Comcast, AT&T, Verizon — control the wired and wireless connections through which all your data flows. People used to talk about the internet as a wonderland for innovative upstarts, but lately the upstarts keep getting clobbered. Today the internet is gigantic corporations, all the way down. Which brings us to net neutrality. The rule basically prevents broadband providers from offering preferential treatment to some content online — it blocks Comcast from giving, say, a speed boost to a streaming video company that can afford to pay over one that cannot.

Amid many legal battles, neutrality rules in some form have governed the internet for years. Does ending network neutrality help the big fish or the little fish? Will scrapping the rules make the internet fairer, more dynamic and more innovative? Will it create a more favorable atmosphere for potential challengers of the Frightful Five? Probably not. In fact, it could entrench their power even further.

[Commentary] With a speed many American internet users can only envy, the Trump administration is re-writing the rules for US internet providers. The administration is quite right that the industry has a serious problem: lack of competition. But a regulatory rollback, paired with the administration’s apparently sanguine attitude towards industry consolidation, will do nothing to solve it, and could make matters worse. The root problem is lack of competition in network construction and improvement. If consumers had more options, fewer rules would be required. President Donald Trump likes to talk about infrastructure investment. Encouraging investment in digital infrastructure — a natural area for private-public partnership — should be part of that agenda. That would do much more good than rolling back sensible if imperfect rules and waving through deals in an industry that already has the upper hand on the consumer.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) unveiled his committee’s agenda on technology and innovation. Under his "blueprint," Chairman Goodlatte hopes to see his committee tackle top tech issues, including changes to surveillance and encryption laws, and on high-skilled immigration.

On immigration, he told reporters the committee was working to “find a balanced solution to increase the high-skilled talent pool to promote job growth through visa and green card reforms,” while also “protecting job opportunities for similarly qualified Americans.” He also focused much of his remarks on surveillance issues, including proposed reforms to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a controversial provision authorizing US intelligence to surveil noncitizens. Chairman Goodlatte also said he hopes to hold a committee hearing in about how the US accesses communications data in other countries.