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4. Network Neutrality means that Internet service providers may not discriminate between different kinds of content and applications online and has always been part of the Internet. The largest telephone and cable companies, including Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, now want to exercise more control, for example, about which applications can be used, and which Web sites go fast or slow or won't load at all. They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data by charging different rates to different users. In order to protect Internet freedom do we need to guarantee Network Neutrality by making it into law? Please answer this question and provide examples and arguments to support your opinion. Government institutions, major universities, and research centers have initiated every decisive technological development leading to the advent of the Internet. The point being, the Internet did not originate in the business world. Traditionally, the Internet is open, without preference being given to one type of traffic over another. The net neutrality movement is an effort to keep this system open. The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Bernes-Lee says: "If we, the Webs users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands. We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want. The ill effects could extend to smartphones and pads, which are also portals to the extensive information that the Web provides." (Lee, 2010) Although born free, Alexander Galloway says that the founding principle of the Net is not freedom, but rather control. These types of media studies show how the question how does it work is also the question whom does it work for? In short, the technical specs matter, ontologically and politically.(Galloway, 2004: xii). Nowadays the largest telephone and cable companies want to exercise more control, in order to tax content providers, a means of guaranteeing speedy delivery of their data by charging different rates to different users. In order to protect Internet freedom we dont need to guarantee Network Neutrality by making it into law. The key issue is that laws made today will just as quickly be outdated tomorrow.1 Based on convergence processes, exponential audiovisual consumption and needs associated with infrastructure, establishing law to ensure net neutrality is not the
1

Network neutrality concept is earlier than current Internet and focused on the existing debate since the era of the telegraph. In 1860, U.S. federal law, Pacific Telegraph Act, stated that "messages received from any individual, company or corporation, or any telegraph line linking this line with any of the terminals will be transmitted impartially, in order of receipt, except for government orders, will priority ..." (Act to facilitate communication between Atlantic and Pacific, 16 June 1860). (CPRPHM, 1860). In 1888, Almon Strowger invented an automated central phone order to overcome the non-neutral phone operators, which redirected calls by profit.

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best solution. Drawing on the principle of net neutrality, its policies and guidelines is much better. The media philosopher, Vilm Flusser (2008), argues that whereas ideas were previously interpreted by written account, we are now living in the era where technical images invade our senses. As we know, the flow of network data is growing exponentially. Not only has video consumption increased, but on-line games and cloud computing as well. Infrastructure has become one of the critical issues, and the public and private sector need address these challenges together. At the heart of the Internet, the TCP/IP, video, music, photo, text, is all the same. As Galloway states, protocols do not perform any interpretation themselves; that is, they encapsulate information inside various wrappers, while remaining relatively indifferent to the content of information contained within." (Galloway, 2004: xiii). Prioritizing video traffic is therefore a short term solution. Convergence tends toward multimedia operating systems. Legislation that differentiates between fixed and mobile Internet, text, audio and video traffic is doomed to obsolescence. Technology is evolving too quickly and, at this point, law-making, will tend to hinder rather than help. I presume the market itself will lead to net neutrality, because it is a competitive differentiator that will lead to technical innovation. Tim Wu (2010), a Columbia law professor, who coined the term "network neutrality", argues that information industries inevitably go through alternating periods of being open and closed: "If past is prologue, today's open Internet will become tomorrow's walled garden". Even so, I believe our walled garden will be evanescent. The issue of net neutrality is creating an invaluable international public sphere for discussion. Society itself in various forms of organization will be watching and demanding action, more effectively than a law. The social capital of this resilient public sphere may be net neutrality itself.

References

CPRPHM Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum. Pacific Telegraph Act of 1860. http://cprr.org/Museum/Pacific_Telegraph_Act_1860.html Accessed Aug, 1, 2011.

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Flusser, O universo das imagens tcnicas elogio da superficialidade. So Paulo: Annablume, 2008.

Galloway, Alexander R. Protocol: how control exists after decentralization. Cambridge: the MIT Press, 2004.

Lee, Tim Bernes. Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality. Scientific American. Nov 22, 2010.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=long-live-the-web Accessed Aug, 1, 2011.

Radunovic, Vladimir. Network Neutrality in law a step forwards or a step backwards? 11/06/2011 http://igbook.diplomacy.edu/2011/06/net-neutrality/ Accessed Aug, 1, 2011.

Wu, Tim. The Master Switch: the rise and fall of information empires. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.