Rachel Feltman: In fact American scientific‘s fast science I’m Rachel Feltman. Net neutrality was in the news again earlier this month, thanks to a US appeals court ruling. The decision stated The Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, did not have the authority to restore net neutrality rules – the agency voted in April, encouraged by then-President Joe Biden.
Net neutrality is one of those issues that I haven’t quite wrapped my head around. So what is it, and what will happen now that the FCC can’t enforce it? Ben Guarino, Associate Technology Editor, is here to explain it all American scientific.
Ben, thanks for coming to chat.
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Ben Guarino: Thank you for being me.
Feltman: It’s a question I think I could answer by now, but I can’t: What is net neutrality?
Guarino: So, in the simplest terms, net neutrality is the idea that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. So if I’m trying to access YouTube or Netflix or Hulu or anything really, my internet service provider, my ISP, will treat all data packets coming from those websites as if they were coming from any other website.
Feltman: So why do we hear about net neutrality in the news? What’s going on with that?
Guarino: There has been a lot of debate about whether there should be net neutrality in the United States. Internet service providers: “Well, if you put this regulation on us, it will stifle competition. It is against the American ideals of capitalism.’
And then consumers and Internet advocates and people who love the idea of an open Internet get to the founding ideas of what the Internet should be: it should be free; it should be for the flow of information, which is “we should, we should stick to net neutrality.”
And so it is decided who should regulate. And the courts recently ruled that the Federal Communications Commission cannot deal with the principles of net neutrality on the Internet.
Feltman: interesting What’s next? What does this mean for people pushing for a free and open Internet?
Guarino: So, if the FCC does not have the ability to regulate ISPs as a telecommunications service – which means that these services must act in the “public interest”, which has higher standards to meet – then the FCC is not. who can enforce those principles of net neutrality, then it’s up to Congress or it’s up to the state.
Feltman: OK, is this good news or bad news for the open Internet?
Guarino: This is bad news for people who support an open Internet. So if there is no federal oversight of net neutrality, it is now state laws that support net neutrality. And these are on the books in many places—in Washington state, in Oregon, in California—and it seemed like maybe they weren’t really enforcing it based on the thought, “Well, there is. federal net neutrality oversight, maybe we don’t have to worry about our states.’ Now that equation changes a bit.
And the thing about the Internet is (laughs) everything is connected, right? So you can’t, the boundaries of the Internet don’t stop in California, so if California has net neutrality laws on the books, there are some who are thinking, “Well, if ISPs in California are going to enforce those laws, they’re going to follow them everywhere.” So that might be a silver lining to the open Internet. for people who want to see their principles protected.
Feltman: And from the perspective of ISPs, what limits net neutrality? What are they trying to do, hoping that the free and open internet won’t let them do it?
Guarino: So the theory goes that if I treat one data packet differently from another data packet, I can slow down your traffic to Netflix. Maybe I have a competing streaming service, and I should do a second one: we talk a lot about net neutrality when it comes to video streaming, because it’s data intensive and, like, something like two-thirds of internet traffic is video streaming because of that. , which is why net neutrality and video services tend to go hand in hand. But if I’m an internet service provider and maybe I have a competing website for Netflix or Hulu…
Feltman: Mm-hmm.
Guarino: And I want more people to use my service, then I can slow down their connection to Netflix and maybe redirect them to my competitor. Or I can say, “Hey, Netflix, you guys have to pay me a little more if you want to keep this fast connection.” And, you know, there’s the concern: that, that price increase that Netflix has to pay, that’s passed on to the consumer.
Feltman: Yeah, and what’s the worst case there? I think in conversations about net neutrality, the implication is that, like, it’s a slippery slope that will fundamentally change the Internet. What is the radically different Internet that people worry we’ll find our way around?
Guarino: That’s a really good question. This is what I can say, talking to researchers David Choffnes at Northeastern University, which examines what we would consider net neutrality violations; so it looked at how the traffic from my computer to, say, my phone appears to Netflix, and how the ISPs in the United States treat that, and came up with a conclusion. Whether the FCC has net neutrality policies or not, states have their own net neutrality laws really subject in the United States. This study is being done when we had FCC oversight, we didn’t have FCC oversight, we had FCC oversight again, and now we, we don’t, so—David told me he saw everything, and basically (laughter), it doesn’t really matter .
David and his colleagues have found, looking at this since 2017, that your fixed cable Internet, there is no violation of net neutrality in the United States, they do not block or throttle traffic. But what do they have? be found that for some users on certain data plans, wireless providers have limited some connections. And the thinking is, historically, spectrum was limited, connected to cell towers and things like that, so maybe when everybody goes home at five o’clock, everybody’s asking to watch Netflix on the subway or something, and it made sense to suppress that.
Now, if you walk into a cell phone store, people will be very quick…
Feltman: Of course
Guarino: 5G network stuff, so maybe that spectrum argument doesn’t hold up anymore. But if they’ve done it historically, maybe they’d do it again. So all of that is to say, in the short term I don’t know that American consumers will really notice the difference. In the long run the price of your Hulu or Netflix subscription may increase slightly.
Feltman: Of course, and with so many huge conglomerates owning so many different types of media and telecommunications companies, there’s no way an ISP owns some of the content you’re watching over other content (laughs), so yeah. sure
Guarino: Maybe the only thing to consider is that this has been going on for a very long time (laughs)…
Feltman: yes
Guarino: The phrase “net neutrality” was coined by a Columbia law student in 2003. So people have been thinking about this for a long time, and just—this debate has gone on—you know, even before the invention of, even before the term “net neutrality,” people have been thinking about the principles of an open Internet. So definitely not this the end of net neutrality; even though it’s out of the FCC’s hands for the foreseeable future, that doesn’t mean net neutrality has been lost.
Feltman: Ben, thanks so much for explaining net neutrality. I finally get it, and I hope the internet stays relatively free and open for the foreseeable future.
Guarino: Great sounds. Thank you for being me.
Feltman: (Laughs)
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Fast Science produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was reported and hosted by Ben Guarino. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck check out our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. subscribe American scientific for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
In fact american scientific this is Rachel Feltman. See you next time!
