Source 

A

     Nunziato, Dawn C. Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Law, 2009. Print.

A-1, For, Telephone 

"Unlike telephone companies or the postal service—which have long been legally required not to discriminate against the content they are charged with carrying—these Internet speech conduits are not similarly regulated."

pg. xiii

A-2

"Comcast blocked emails from AfterDowningStreet, an organization that sought to lobby Congress to impeach the president for his conduct in bringing about the war with Iraq, and from the antiwar organization MeetWithCindy, established by antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan."

pg. xiv

A-3

"DSL provider AT&T censored the anti-Bush lyrics of Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder during a live cablecast of a concert."

pg. xiv

A-4

"Speech on political and protest issues is traditionally accorded the highest degree of protection within our constitutional scheme, but because such speech restrictions as these occur at the hands of “private” conduits, they are not considered First Amendment violations under the prevailing understanding of the free

speech guarantee."

pg. xiv

A-5

"Congress in 1996 explicitly encouraged Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict access to content that the providers consider objectionable and expressly insulated the providers from liability for doing so"

pg. 2

A-6

 "A decade ago, the FCC regulated the telephone companies that provided dial-up Internet access as 'common carriers' and prohibited them from discriminating against—in the form of blocking, censoring, or degrading—Internet content or applications"

pg. 3

A-7

As FCC commissioner Michael Copps described the state of affairs prior to the widespread deployment of broadband Internet access, 'In the dial-up world, [each Internet user] has jurisdiction over the applications that prevail, and what power that is! No network owner telling you where to go and what to do. You run the show. This freedom—this openness—has always been at the heart of what the Internet community and its original innovators have celebrated. Anyone can access the Internet . . . and read or say what they want. No one can corner control of the Internet for their purposes"

pg.3

A-8

"the telephone companies, from the early days of communications regulation, have been subject to common carriage obligations under the Communications Act of 1938 requiring them to facilitate the transmission of all (legal) conversations, so too were they required under the common carriage doctrine to facilitate the transmission of all (legal) Internet content."

pg. 3

A-9

"In 2002, the FCC concluded that one class of broadband providers—cable broadband providers—were not subject to common carriage nondiscrimination requirements under the Communications Act. Although the lower federal courts rejected the FCC’s interpretation, the United States Supreme Court in 2005 upheld the FCC’s decision to deregulate cable broadband providers in the Brand X case"

pg.3 

A-10,

"Because broadband providers offer their own content and applications, they have the financial incentive to restrict or impede competing content and applications from other providers. Broadband providers have the ability, have the incentive, and—under the current regime—appear to enjoy the legal right to engage in a variety of types of discrimination against the content and applications that they are charged with carrying."

pg. 4

A-11

"And most, if not all, broadband providers explicitly claim the right in their terms of service to censor whatever speech they choose. AT&T, for example, claims the right in its “sole discretion to refuse, block, move, or remove any content that is available via the service.”

pg.5 

A-12 

Seth Kreimer—who has criticized such “censorship by proxy”—explains, such “private censorship takes place at low levels of visibility. It is neither coordinated nor reviewed. Often, neither speakers nor listeners will know that the message has not been conveyed, and there is no way to determine how dialogue has been deformed.”

pg. 6 

A-13

"It ultimately became apparent to AfterDowningStreet that Comcast had filtered the email that Comcast email subscribers received and censored all communications that contained the term www.AfterDowningStreet.org"

pg. 6 

A-14

"Similarly, in the wake of the commencement of hostilities, Google censored all images of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners of war Shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, AOL and Yahoo! censored message boards that hosted anti-American and anti-Islam posting"

pg.8

A-15

"In one such instance, AOL—once the nation’s (and the world’s) largest  Internet service provider—blocked emails sent by those who opposed certain AOL email policies. AOL blocked emails containing links to an online petition by the organization DearAOL.com, a web-based coalition of six hundred organizations (including the AFL-CIO) that was critical of AOL’s proposed email policies."

pg. 9

 A-16

"In a much-discussed incident, Madison River Communications, a midwestern DSL provider, blocked hundreds of its subscribers from accessing Vonage, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider. Madison River did so by engaging in port blocking—a type of blocking that enables Internet providers to block content based on the Internet port over which the content is transmitted."

pg. 9

A-17

"At least two major broadband network operators—Verizon and AT&T— include clauses in their terms of service authorizing them to terminate the accounts of subscribers who criticize them or their business partners"

pg. 10

A-18 

"As Vuze, Inc.—a primary source of legal video downloads whose services were affected by Comcast’s actions—explains: “Comcast does this by hacking into its own network and using a clandestine “Man in the Middle” tactic whereby each party is sent a communication “RST” (reset) message which falsely tells the other party to shut down the connection.”45 As a result of such interference, each affected user’s computer received a message invisible to the user that looked like it came from another computer instructing it to stop communicating. The message, however, actually originated with Comcast."

pg. 10

A-19

  "Several broadband providers have also publicly expressed their intentions to sell preferential Internet access speed to the highest bidder, or to reserve the same for their own (or affiliated) content, and to (respectively) degrade Internet access for those unwilling to pay for this privilege. AT&T’s Project Lightspeed and Verizon’s FiOS, for example, reserve substantial portions of last-mile bandwidth for the broadcast downloading of their own preferred video services."

pg. 11 

A-20

"In a similar vein, Bill Smith, chief technology officer of BellSouth, claimed that his company enjoys the discretion to charge a company like Yahoo! for the opportunity to have its search engine site load faster than that of Google, and to degrade the quality of a rival VoIP provider unless such a rival pays BellSouth’s asking price."

pg. 11

A-21 

"Google News has used geolocation technology to block content from being accessed not only within speech-restrictive countries such as China but also within the United States. The World Prout Assembly website claims, for example, that a news article discussing efforts in Congress to use U.S. military force to end genocide in Darfur was accessible via a Google News link in other countries but was blocked by Google News for users seeking access to it in the United States. The New Media Journal has also been blocked by Google News, in connection with articles that were critical of Islam."

pg 15

A-22

"Under current First Amendment jurisprudence and telecommunications policy, the preceding restrictions of content or applications by broadband providers and other powerful gatekeepers of Internet expression are legally permissible"

pg. 11

Source 

B

"What Is Net Neutrality?" American Civil Liberties Union. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.

<https://www.aclu.org/net-neutrality>.

B-1

"In January 2014, however, a federal court said the FCC had overstepped its bounds. But, while it also said that the FCC could impose new and potentially even stronger rules, the FCC has signaled that it may instead propose that Internet service providers be allowed to charge content providers for a faster conduit to consumers. That would effectively kill a major component of net neutrality."

pg. 1 

B-2

"Now, unless the FCC takes action to support a free and open Internet, big broadband providers will actually have a much greater range of options for interfering with our communications than the phone companies ever had. It would be pretty difficult for a landline phone company to block individual calls or make other calls go through faster. Not so much for big broadband providers."

pg.1 

B-3

"New technologies now allow telecom companies to scrutinize every piece of information we send or receive online websites, email, videos, Internet phone calls, or data generated by games or social networks. And they can program the computers that route that information to interfere with the data flow by slowing down or blocking traffic and communicators that they don't like (and speeding up traffic they do like or that pays them extra for the privilege)."

B-4 

"Imagine if the phone company could mess with your calls every time you tried to order pizza from Domino's, because Pizza Hut is paying them to route their calls first."

B-5

"The [FCC] was not blocked outright by the January court decision from enforcing network neutrality principles. It was blocked from doing so because it had classified broadband carriers as "information services" as defined in the 1996 Telecommunications Act. However, that classification never made sense; broadband carriers always fit much better under the law's definition of "telecommunications services." To remedy this, all the FCC has to do is reclassify Internet carriage as a "telecommunications service," which would automatically subject online communications to common carrier protections. Unfortunately, it has instead said it will propose a rule allowing companies to pay for access to a fast lane to deliver content to their customers"

pg. 1 

B-6 

"During an August 2007 performance by the rock group Pearl Jam in Chicago, AT&T censored words from lead singer Eddie Vedder's performance. The ISP, which was responsible for streaming the concert, shut off the sound as Vedder sang, 'George Bush, leave this world alone' and 'George Bush find yourself another home.' "

pg. 1 

B-7

"AT&T, the self-advertised presenting sponsor of the concert series, denied viewers the complete exclusive coverage they were promised. Although Vedder's words contained no profanity, an AT&T spokesperson claimed that the words were censored to prevent youth visiting the website from being exposed to "excessive profanity." AT&T then blamed the censorship on an external Website contractor hired to screen the performance, calling it a mistake and pledging to restore the unedited version of Vedder's appearance online. "

pg.1 

B-8 

" In 2007, Comcast, the nation's largest cable TV operator and second largest ISP, discriminated against an entire class of online activities in 2007 by using deep packet inspection to block file transfers from customers using popular peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent, eDonkey, and Gnutella."

pg. 1 

B-9

" Comcast's actions, which were confirmed in nationwide tests conducted by the Associated Press, were unrelated to network congestion, since the blocking took place at times when the network was not congested. Comcast blocked applications that are often used to trade videos — pirated content but also much legitimate content. Critics noted that Comcast hopes to sell online video itself. The FCC subsequently took action against Comcast for this abuse; Comcast stopped the throttling but also challenged the order in court and won, leading to a crisis in enforcement of network neutrality." 

pg. 1 

B-10

"In late 2007, Verizon Wireless cut off access to a text-messaging program by the pro-abortion-rights group NARAL that the group used to send messages to its supporters. Verizon stated it would not service programs from any group "that seeks to promote an agenda or distribute content that, in its discretion, may be seen as controversial or unsavory to any of our users." Verizon Wireless reversed its censorship of NARAL only after widespread public outrage."

pg.1 

B-11 

 "In 2005, the Canadian telecom, involved in a bitter labor dispute, blocked its Internet subscribers from accessing a website run by the union that was on strike against Telus."

pg. 1 

Source

C

Fung, Brian. "Net Neutrality Was the Biggest Tech Issue of the Year. But Nobody Campaigned on It." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 4 Nov. 2014. Web. 10 Nov. 2014. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/11/04/net-neutrality-was-the-biggest-tech-issue-of-the-year-but-nobody-campaigned-on-it/>.

C-1

"In absolute terms, net neutrality produced a staggering response from the public. The Federal Communications Commission got a record-setting 3.9 million comments from Americans who felt, at some level, that the future of the Internet was at stake."

pg. 1 

C-2 

"A more compelling explanation for the lack of campaign interest in tech — for net neutrality, at any rate — turns on three things. First, net neutrality is primarily an issue for the executive branch, not Congress. Although lawmakers have been sending letters about it to the FCC along with everyone else, there's very little they can do to determine the outcome of that issue (short of passing a new law, and we all know how good Washington is at doing that these days). The ball is in the FCC's court, no matter how the midterms turn out."

pg. 1 

C-3 

"Second, the public response to net neutrality has mostly been the result of Internet organizing — which, by definition, involves people who are spread out and not a cohesive political actor. If you have 50 activists spread out across 50 states, that's a very different kind of political power than having those same 50 activists concentrated in one congressional district, which can change the outcome of an election."

pg. 1 

D

Fahey, Mike. "Why Gamers Should Care About Net Neutrality." Kotaku. 8 Apr. 2010. Web. 10 Nov. 2014. <http://kotaku.com/5512448/why-gamers-should-care-about-net-neutrality>.

D-1 

"Say you pay $30 a month for your internet connection. Net neutrality dictates that, for your $30, you have access to everything the internet has to offer, without restrictions to content, platforms, or equipment you have connected to it. All data sources are treated equally. "

pg. 1 

D-2 

"Comcast attempted to restrict access to BitTorrent in 2008, only to have the FCC step in and ban them from doing so. Now a federal appeals court says that the FCC had no right to do that, and Comcast is free to do what it likes with its customers' service"

pg. 1 

D-3 

"With today's game consoles easily identifiable via network, what's to stop a broadband provider from claiming that too much traffic is being used by your Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, and demand you pay a premium to connect them to the web?"

pg 1. 

A-23

"Google has also engaged in acts of manipulating its search results and rankings and censoring its associated “sponsored links”—the brief text messages that are keyed to search terms entered by Google users. In an example of the first, SearchKing, a search engine optimization website, alleged that Google reduced its “PageRank” from eight to zero—thereby effectively banishing it from the universe of sites accessible via a Google search—because Google perceived SearchKing as a competitor. Google’s search engine has also banished from existence websites that are critical of its practices." 

pg. 14

A-25

"Referring to its policy of refusing to accept sponsored links that contain “sensitive issues” or that “advocate against any individual, group, or organization,”Google has refused to host a range of political, religious, and critical social commentary in the form of the sponsored links themselves, as well as the websites linked to by these sponsored links."

pg. 15

A-26 

"W. Frederick Zimmerman, who maintains a political website called the Zimmerblog, sought to advertise his book Basic Documents About the Detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, which contained the full text of several key court opinions, including Hamdi v. Bush, Rumsfeld v. Padilla, and Rasul v. Bush, as well as various applicable Geneva Convention documents. Once Google became aware of the material Zimmerman was linking to via this sponsored link, it suspended Zimmerman’s account, informing him that “Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain ‘sensitive issues.’”

pg. 15 

A-27 

"Google refused to allow Republican Senator Susan Collins’s campaign to acquire a sponsored link that was critical of left-leaning advocacy group MoveOn.org. Collins wished to acquire sponsored links with text such as “Help Susan Collins stand up to the MoveOn.org money machine.” Google apparently declined to allow such sponsored links on the grounds that they contained the trademark-protected term MoveOn.org. Yet Google has allowed others to refer to trademark-protected terms in a critical manner."

pg. 15

A-28 

"John Perr, author of the Perrspectives website, which contains “left-of-center” political commentary, sought to advertise his website via a Google-sponsored link with an advertisement titled “The Liberal Resource—Analysis, Commentary, and Satire—Complete Liberal Resource Center.” The linked-to website contained an article written by Perr that was critical of George W. Bush and that characterized the president as “secretive, paranoid, and vengeance-filled.” Once Google became aware of this language within Perr’s article, it informed Perr that his link was being removed because it linked to a website that contained text that was critical of Bush and therefore inappropriately “advocates against an individual, group, or organization."

pg. 16 

A-29 

"Political activist Christopher Langdon sought and was refused the right to purchase from Google sponsored links for two political websites: (1) www.ncjusticefraud.com, in which Langdon claimed that the attorney general of North Carolina lied to the United States Supreme Court; and (2) www.chinaisevil.com"

pg. 16

A-30 

"When the owner of a T-shirt shop in Los Angeles sought to secure a sponsored link from Google, he was told that Google would not accept his link unless he removed from his site all T-shirts with slogans critical of George W. Bush"

pg. 16

A-31

"The nonprofit environmental group Oceana sought to secure a sponsored link criticizing Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s environmental policies under the headline “Help us protect the world’s oceans.” Two days after hosting Oceana’s sponsored link, apparently in response to pressure from Royal Caribbean, Google pulled the Oceana advertisement, per its policy prohibiting links criticizing groups or companies."

pg. 17 

E

Natash, Gatham. "Court Tosses Rules of Road for Internet." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company. Web. 10 Nov. 2014. <http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304049704579320500441593462>.

E-1

"The ruling could usher in an era of tiered Internet service, in which they get some content at full speed while other websites appear slower because their owners chose not to pay up."

pg. 1

E-2 

"Adopted in 2010, the Federal Communications Commission rules said that companies like Verrizon Communications Inc. and Comcasy Corp. had to treat all similar content on their networks equally, whether it was a YouTube video or a home video posted on a personal website."

pg. 1

E-3 

"Deciding a lawsuit brought by Verizon, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down the rules. The court said the FCC saddled broadband providers with the same sorts of obligations as traditional "common carrier" telecommunications services, such as landline phone systems, even though the commission had explicitly decided not to classify broadband as a telecom service."

pg. 1

E-4 

Tony Wible, an analyst at Janney Capital Markets, said,"You need to put forth an economic model to finance that investment," he said. "The question is over the price point and who is going to set it."

pg. 1

E-5 

"The ruling also poses a dilemma for the FCC and President Barack Obama, who has pushed for equal treatment of Internet traffic going back to his first presidential campaign."

pg. 1 

E-6 

"The current FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, has said he is against regulating broadband Internet in the same manner of the landline phone system. Such regulation could expose broadband providers to a panoply of new federal rules on pricing and service—which critics say would lead to excessive control of the industry by Washington."

pg. 1

E-7

"Silicon Valley companies criticized the ruling and called on Washington to respond. Telecom companies "are now in a position to not only make considerable sums of money but, in many ways, they are one of the most important arbiters of culture and speech and what is or isn't going to be on the Internet," said Eric Klinker, chief executive of BitTorrent Inc., a website that allows people to swap digital movies."

pg. 1 

E-8 

"Verizon and other Internet-service providers said the ruling would have little impact on the way consumers experience the Internet. "Verizon has been and remains committed to the open Internet which provides consumers with competitive choices and unblocked access to lawful websites and content when, where, and how they want," said Verizon Executive Vice President Randal Milch."

pg. 1 

E-9 

"Comcast had agreed to abide by the FCC's open Internet rules for seven years as part of a deal to win regulatory approval for its purchase of a controlling stake in media company NBCUniversal."

pg. 1

E-10 

"We remain comfortable with that commitment because we have not—and will not—block our customers' ability to access lawful Internet content, applications or services," said Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen in a statement."

pg. 1 

F

"Net Neutrality." Electronic Frontier Foundation. Web. 10 Nov. 2014. <https://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality>.

F-1 

"We’ve seen discriminatory traffic shaping that prioritizes some protocols over others, like when a Canadian ISP slowed down all incrypted file transfers for five years."

pg. 1 

F-2 

"Unfortunately, the FCC is considering a plan that would allow some Internet providers to provide better access to some websites that pay a fee to reach users faster. This kind of “pay-to-play” Internet stifles innovation. New websites that can’t afford expensive fees for better service will face new barriers to success, leaving users with ever fewer options and a less diverse Internet."

pg. 1 

F-3 

"The FCC has a poor track record of getting net neutrality right. In January 2014, a federal court rejected the bulk of the FCC’s 2010 Open Internet order. The rules that the court threw out, however, were deeply flawed"

pg. 1 

F-4 

" The FCC fined Verizon in 2012 for charging consumers for using their phone as a mobile hotspot."

pg. 1 

F-5

"In the 2009 NPRM, “reasonable network management” included actions preventing “the unlawful transfer of content” and “the transfer of unlawful content”—essentially code words for allowing your ISP to interfere with your service if it suspects you of engaging in copyright infringement. The term was included as a specific exception to each of the proposed rules."

pg. 2 

F-6 

"We also noted that since the rules as drafted only implicated lawful activity, no such exceptions for unlawful activity should have been necessary in the first place. In addition, we argued that no “reasonable network management” exception was warranted for transparency (one of the NPRM’s six principles). We see no justification for keeping consumers in the dark about non-neutral “reasonable network management” practices by their service providers" 

pg. 2 

G

Wasserman, Todd. "5 Arguments Against Net Neutrality." Mashable. Web. 10 Nov. 2014. <http://mashable.com/2014/05/16/5-arguments-against-net-neutrality/>.

G-2 

"If the government enforces net neutrality it would essentially be impeding what had been a free market. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the cable industry's primary lobbying group, argues that regulating the Internet like a utility — one of the ideas being considered — is dumb. "Imposing regulations designed for century-old utilities will only choke off growth and investment," the group reasons."

pg.1 

G-3 

"Cohen continued that the days of all-you-can-eat pricing are coming to an end. Within five years he expects Comcast to charge based on usage. “People who use more should pay more, and people who use less should pay less," he said. Data caps will be high enough that most customers won't notice them, he says. Going back to the utilities metaphor, that's the same way it works with electricity, gas and water."

pg.1 

H

McMillan, Robert. "What Everyone Gets Wrong in the Debate Over Net Neutrality | WIRED." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 21 June 14. Web. 10 Nov. 2014. <http://www.wired.com/2014/06/net_neutrality_missing/>.

H-1 

"When the rules first leaked out in May, protesters camped out in front of the FCC’s Washington offices. Big tech companies such as Google, Amazon, and Netflix signed a letter asking the government communications agency to bar internet providers from discriminating “both technically and financially against internet companies.”

pg. 1 

H-2 

"The only trouble is that, here in the year 2014, complaints about a fast-lane don’t make much sense. Today, privileged companies—including Google, Facebook, and Netflix—already benefit from what are essentially internet fast lanes, and this has been the case for years. Such web giants—and others—now have direct connections to big ISPs like Comcast and Verizon, and they run dedicated computer servers deep inside these ISPs. In technical lingo, these are known as “peering connections” and “content delivery servers,” and they’re a vital part of the way the internet works."

pg. 1 

H-3 

"Fast lane is how the internet is built today,” says Craig Labovitz, who, as the CEO of DeepField Networks, an outfit whose sole mission is to track how companies build internet infrastructure, probably knows more about the design of the modern internet than anyone else. And many other internet experts agree with him."

pg. 1 

H-4 

"'The net neutrality debate has got many facets to it, and most of the points of the debate are artificial, distracting, and based on an incorrect mental model on how the internet works,' says Dave Taht, a developer of open-sourced networking software."

pg. 1 

H-5 

"We shouldn’t waste so much breath on the idea of keeping the network completely neutral. It isn’t neutral now. What we should really be doing is looking for ways we can increase competition among ISPs—ways we can prevent the Comcasts and the AT&Ts from gaining so much power that they can completely control the market for internet bandwidth."

pg. 1 

H-6

"Though the network will never be neutral, we can find ways of promoting a vibrant market for fast internet speeds that’s open to everyone. At the end of his rant, John Oliver actually comes pretty close to the real issue. Advocates, he says, “should not be talking about protecting net neutrality. They shouldn’t even use that phrase. They should call it preventing cable company f***ery, because that is what it is.'"

pg. 1 

H-7 

"The net neutrality debate is based on a mental model of the internet that hasn’t been accurate for more than a decade. We tend to think of the internet as a massive public network that everyone connects to in exactly the same way. We envision data traveling from Google and Yahoo and Uber and every other online company into a massive internet backbone, before moving to a vast array of ISPs that then shuttle it into our homes. That could be a neutral network, but it’s not today’s internet. It couldn’t be. Too much of the traffic is now coming from just a handful of companies."

pg. 1 

H-8 

"Ten years ago, internet traffic was “broadly distributed across thousands of companies,” Labovitz said in his prepared statement to the committee. But by 2009, half of all internet traffic originated in less than 150 large content and content-distribution companies, and today, half of the internet’s traffic comes fromjust 30 outfits, including Google, Facebook, and Netflix."

pg. 1 

H-9 

"Today, a typical webpage request can involve dozens of back-and-forth communications between the browser and the web server, and even though internet packets move at the speed of light, all of that chatter can noticeably slow things down. But by getting inside the ISPs, the big web companies can significantly cut back on the delay. Over the last six years, they’ve essentially rewired the internet"

pg. 1 

H-10 

"Does this give companies like Google and Netflix a potential advantage over the next internet startup? Sure it does. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, this rewiring has been great for consumers. It has allowed millions to enjoy House of Cards, YouTube, and Kai the hatchet-wielding hitchhiker. It’s the reason why the latest version of high-definition video, Ultra HD 4K, is available for streaming over the internet and not on some new disk format."

pg. 1 

H-11 

"although Google does have an edge over others, not every company needs that edge. Most companies don’t generate enough traffic to warrant a dedicated peering connection or CDN. And if the next internet startup does get big enough, it too can arrange for a Google-like setup. Building the extra infrastructure is expensive, but making the right arrangements with a Comcast or a Verizon is pretty cheap—at least for now."

pg. 1 

H-12 

"They’re happy to have Google or Netflix or Akamai or Level 3 servers or routers in their data centers because they speed up service for their customers and reduce the amount of traffic that has to flow out of their network. You could look at these arrangements as fast lanes—but because ISPs have treated their networks as an open marketplace and delivered real value to consumers and businesses, they’re not the kind of thing that the FCC should be discouraging."

pg. 1 

H-12 

"The problem is whether the ISPs will grow so large that they have undue control over the market for fast speeds—whether they can independently decide who gets access to what connection at what price. “The question is which kinds of fast lanes are problematic and which kinds are not,” says Marvin Ammori, a lawyer and net neutrality advocate."

pg. 1 

H-13

"Ammori is worried that, recently, internet service providers—Comcast, in particular—have been started to flex their muscle. Transit provider Level 3 says that, as it sends traffic into their networks, the big U.S. ISPs are letting some of its routers overload with data. And amidst these bottlenecks, Comcast is exploring ways of selling its own CDN services that can help companies increase delivery speeds. "

pg. 1 

H-14

"Ammori worries that the ISPs will start throwing their weight around unfairly. “We don’t want AT&T and others to impose a tax and to treat those who pay a tax better than others,” he says. The strange thing is that even some of the biggest “net neutrality” advocates downplay the importance of these peering deals, saying they have nothing to do with net neutrality. But this is largely an argument of semantics. The point is that, whatever terms you use to describe it, the situation could lead to an unfair playing field."

pg. 1 

H-15 

"One way to prevent this [tax] is through greater competition among ISPs. If consumers and web companies have many ISPs to choose from, no one ISP can control who gets what. Ammori doesn’t see more competition among ISPs as a panacea, but he thinks it would help. "

pg. 1 

H-16 

"And another network activist, Seth Johnson, believes competition can change things, but that it will take government action to make that happen. “Competition and regulation are not at odds in every case. Particularly in telecom,” he says. In any event, competition is a bigger issue than net neutrality. The internet has evolved, but the debate must evolve along with it."

pg. 1 

H-17 

"If Comcast’s last-mile of cable connection was available to all competitors under the same terms that gave dial-up service providers access to all copper telephone networks back in the 1990s, we would have more ISPs in more geographical areas. Consumers could simply switch providers whenever Netflix or YouTube started to get choppy. And that would give Netflix and YouTube more leverage in their deals with the ISPs. At the moment, this option—where ISPs are treated as “common carriers”—is on the table, but it seems like a remote possibility. Maybe it shouldn’t be. Instead of railing against fast lanes, we should be pushing Washington to explore ideas like this that could actually promote competition among ISPs. “In the present situation,” Johnson says, “the debate is misdirected.”"

pg. 1