Los Angeles Is the Home of the Open Internet

[Commentary] The Internet started here in Los Angeles (CA) in October 1969, with a digital message sent from a computer at UCLA to a computer at Stanford University in Palo Alto (CA). The Internet has always been an Open Internet where online traffic is treated equally, whether the digital packets are an essay sent by a student to their teacher, or a movie streamed from a multibillion-dollar corporation.

Since its inception, it has been a matter of principle that the Internet’s underlying protocols and standards are open, and the traffic uncensored. Further, the Internet itself has never been centrally governed. While aspects of the Net are well-organized, such as the standards bodies, the open-source communities and the assignment of domain names and network addresses, the Net overall is a loose cooperative system that has worked extraordinarily well with self-defined rules around network neutrality and openness. ICANN, the international body responsible for assigning the top-level domain names and network address ranges, is also based here in LA. We need to ensure that the original rules of neutrality and openness remain in place as we increasingly see access to the Internet controlled by fewer and fewer entities.

We hope that the Federal Communications Commission will vote in support of net neutrality so we all can keep using the Internet fairly and openly, as it has been ever since it was invented in Los Angeles.

[Eric Garcetti is the Mayor of Los Angeles]