C5-1 CASE STUDY 5 NET NEUTRALITY Few issues related to business use of the Internet have spurred as much heated debate as Net Neutrality. At the heart of the Net Neutrality debate is the idea that Internet access providers should not discriminate with regard to what applications an individual can use or interact with over the Internet. Advocates of Net Neutrality contend that individual freedom to use of the Internet extends to the content uploads or downloads. They also believe that individuals acquiring services from Internet access providers should be able to use the applications and devices of their choice, and be allowed to interact with the content of their choice anywhere on the Internet. The concept of Net Neutrality is grounded in traditional “common carriage” concepts. Because carriers of goods, people, and information can be considered common carriers, common carriage concepts have been applied to trains, planes, buses, and telephone companies. Common carriage principles embody the ideal that the efficient movement of goods and information is essential to our economy, nation, and culture, and therefore carriers must not discriminate against or favor particular individuals or content. If common carriers are truly public goods, it can be argued that these modes of conveyance should not discriminate with regard to what they carry or where they carry it. This also means that the carrier should not be held liable for carrying things that may be harmful. For example, if a terrorist C5-2 uses a subway to travel to the site of a terrorist act, the subway cannot be sued for being complicit in terrorism. Telecommunication carriers have been classified as common carriers for more than 100 years, dating back to the early days of the telegraph. Nearly half a century has passed since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) determined that the telephone network should be an open platform over which computer networks can be created. As a result of the Carterphone case, the FCC resolved that individuals had the right to attach devices of their choosing to the telephone network [BOSW12]. This opened the door for data communication devices such as fax machines and modems to be attached to telephone lines, thereby making it possible to create computer networks over the telephone network. In essence, court and regulatory rulings in the U.S. created an environment that fostered the idea that computer networks could be constructed to go anywhere the telephone network could take them using devices that could carry just about any type of content. The decisions made by courts and regulatory agencies that opened the door for telephone networks to carry data generated by computers were largely consistent with traditional common carriage concepts. However, the emergence of the World Wide Web and the increased popularity of broadband access that it generated added a ...