ISP Servers What Neutrality Means to You & New Challenges to Consumers

  ISP Servers - What Net Neutrality Means to You!

New Challenges to Consumers

Business is Business, at least, that is what the old adage says. In reality though, how comfortable are you with the array of services your Internet Service Provider, (ISP) delivers?  You are probably, very comfortable!  Think about what you are getting for your hard-earned money, Internet Service, Cable Television, Sports Channels . . . and the list goes on.  What if, though, you receive a letter from your cable provider, which states, your services are being cut off, not because you are not current on your bill, but, because they cannot afford to support those services in their entirety?  This is not, an unusual situation, and perhaps, this could happen in the very near future. The bottom-line . . . money and monopoly, simply stated; business is not business, as usual, as some would state!  What is the question here, and what solution are we seeking.  The answer is simple, can regulators avoid the insatiable quest by ISP supplier’s competitive zeal for money---we shall see.  Considerable thought and research has been profoundly published on this subject matter, one good example would be;  Yochai Benkler, in an article titled: From Consumer to Users: Shifting the Deeper Structures of Regulation Toward Sustainable Commons and User Access, (2000), published by Benkler while attending the George Washington University Law School.  In this article, Benkler offers an opinion regarding the new fashion of digital layering, designed specifically to capture a fee for service, (much like the HMO), or stated alternatively, “no more bundles,”  however, from a regulatory perspective, Benkler offers this insight,

As the digitally networked environment matures, regulatory choices abound that implicate whether the network will be one of peer users or one of active producers who serve a menu of prepackaged information goods to consumers whose role is limited to selecting from this menu. These choices occur at all levels of the information environment: the physical infrastructure layer--wires, cable, radio frequency spectrum--the logical infrastructure layer--software--and the content layer. At the physical infrastructure level, we are seeing it in such decisions as the digital TV orders (DTV Orders), or the question of open access to cable broadband services, and the stunted availability of license-free spectrum. At the logical layer, we see laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (2) and the technology control litigation that has followed hard upon its heels, as owners of copyrighted works attempt to lock up the software layer to permit them to control all valuable uses of their works. (3) At the content layer, we have seen an enclosure movement aimed at enabling information vendors to capture all the downstream value of their information. This enclosure raises the costs of becoming a user--rather than a consumer--of information and undermines the possibility of becoming a producer/user of information for reasons other than profit, by means other than sales.

At all these levels, the fundamental commitment of our democracy to secure "the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources"(4) which has traditionally animated structural media regulation, should be on securing a significant component of the information environment for creative use by users. To implement such an agenda would require a focus on identifying resources necessary for the production and exchange of information and fashioning regulatory policies that make access to and use of these resources equally and ubiquitously available to all users of the network. Developing a series of commons in such resources is an important mode of implementation of this commitment. Other modes could include access and carriage requirements aimed specifically at making possible the development of a network of peer users. Identifying and sustaining commons and securing access to communicative resources are more important focuses for information policy concerned with democracy than assuring that there are eight rather than three broadcast networks or that no two networks are under common ownership.

Please feel free to comment, and the link to Yochai Benkler’s article has been provided.  Html link: http://www.law.gwu.edu/

  

References

Benkler, Y. (2000, May). From Consumers to Users: Shifting the Deeper Structures of Regulation Toward Sustainable Commons and User Access. Federal Communications Law Journal, 52(3), 561. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.db24.linccweb.org/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA62357171&v=2.1&u=lincclin_spjc&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=7f25962495d2bfe04bd9994c9761cb85