Cyber-Social: digital democracy

Net Neutrality: Presenting a Politicized Web

So, I just recently found out that my cellphone provider, Verizon Wireless, is about to kill unlimited data plans. AT&T recently made a similar movement, and we have known for some time that Comcast, a cable internet provider, throttles data speeds, giving people slower downloads if they like to use high-bandwith services like Netflix, Skype, and Bittorent. Now, this concerns me because efforts to charge for tiered usage of data and the practice of capping or limiting the amount of data that a person is allowed to use on a connection that they paid for are, for me, signs that internet service providers are moving away from the ideas surrounding net neutrality.

What exactly is Net Neutrality and what does it mean for you?

Check out this video from the Save The Internet Coalition:

Check out Net Neutrality 101 for more up-to-date information on the topic.

This post is sparked, in part, by Verizon's change in policy and by a conversation we had in class the other day concerning the place of democracy on the internet and the democratization (or perceived democratization) of new media forms, including blogs like this one. I think that in any discussion of politics and the internet, that net neutrality as a concept should certainly be on the agenda.

Connections

In chapter three of The Myth of Digital Democracy, Matthew Hindman is concerned with (what he sees) as the two main methods people use to find expressly political websites: random browsing/linking, and online search engines like Google and Yahoo. Problematically skipping over the entirety of social networking, Hindman's statistical findings point to what he calls "Googlearchy"whereby "the number of links pointing to a site is the most important determinant of site visibility" and a "niche dominance should be a general rule of online life," where such "niche dominance [is] self-perpetuating," because of its relative political gravity (55).

Essentially, what he's trying to say is that a handful of powerful, political sites garner more attention from web searches, because blogs, like this one, make links like these which inevitably put those sites above others on a Google search. (If you want to know more about this practice, look into Search Engine Optimization). Now, this is a fairly accurate account of online searching and relative popularity, but a more insidious issue lurks underneath the surface as large corporations find ways to usurp Net Neutrality.

So What About Net Neutrality?

With the internet as it currently (mostly) is today, Hindman's discussion of web politics really is democratic, in the sense that anyone who pays for or who can attain access to an internet service can learn to post links about political topics which make them rise to popularity and notoriety. By the same token, citizen journalism is more possible than ever, and at least in America, we don't have a ton of hard limits about what you can and can't do with the internet (yet).

Imagine if your internet service provider noticed that you watched a lot of Netflix movies (let's say they're political documentaries) and that you liked to make searches like "tactics for urban political dissent." They own the pipes that bring you your data, so they can (though they shouldn't) peek in and see some basic details about what you're doing online. As previously mentioned, Comcast has been found out for this practice of "packet shaping" where they throttle down your speeds if they see that you're downloading a lot of of video, for instance. This applies to illegally - as well as legally- downloaded content.

After all, Comcast would probably rather you pay for their cable service than have you watch viral/grassroots-politically-oriented YouTube videos all day, it's in their best monetary interest, of course. They are in the entertainment business, you know.

Now, Verizon suddenly deciding to tier (provide different levels at different costs) of their wireless data service, instead of the current unlimited plan, doesn't entirely move away from the principal of net neutrality. But, I see such movements as the beginning of making differential levels of access to the internet. If you can pay more, you get more; conversely, those only able to afford the 75MB a month plan will barely be able to check their email without going over their limit. More distressing, perhaps, is that the Verizon tiering comes shortly after the iPhone and iPad 2, two of the most popular mobile internet devices, became available on the network.

Some pundits argue that you should pay more for internet service if you use more. I definitely recognize the merit of this argument, even if - as a relatively poor tech-savvy graduate student - this kind of tiering puts myself and other people who are unable to afford premium service at a disadvantage.

However, in the interest of the internet being a truly democratic medium, I prefer proffering the idea that internet service providers, like Comcast, should only provide "dumb pipes," or access to the internet that cannot be throttled or modified. Already, particularly in America, if you pay say $60/mo for a 5+ Megabit internet connection, you most likely will never truly see download speeds that fast, because ISP's cut corners and overload their servers in order to handle more customers. Personally, I have an internet connection similar to the one described above, and it's rare that I get 1 Megabit sustained download speed. In a dumb pipe situation, an ISP would not be allowed to falsely advertise higher-than-achievable speeds and would also not throttle down a customer's speed if they happen to be using all of the data they paid for.

To widen the metaphor of dumb pipes, many folks believe that access to data and the internet should work more like public utility, like access to water in a typical American home. This site provides a great summary of this argument, but essentially, the belief is that a basic rate should allow usable, sustained, and uninterrupted data flow. Just as the water company shouldn't care that I wash my body, my plates, my clothes, or my cat, Comcast shouldn't dictate that I can't see online video or use Skype without paying a special fee. Furthermore, they certainly shouldn't be peeking into my political life online, but, you know, big business is like sand - they have a way of getting in everywhere. . .

***If you want to learn more about Net Neutrality and find out what you can do to help,

check out: Net Neutrality 101, sign up for the newsletter at http://www.savetheinternet.com, and check out what you can do to help the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation at http://www.eff.org. Together, we can work to keep the internet free, open, and for the people.