Net Neutrality is Back In Front

The Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton reaffirmed her position on internet neutrality by way of her proposed national broadband internet system this month. Stating job growth as one of her priorities, it is her intention to create new jobs in the high-tech fields by encouraging investments in the internet.

Clinton’s plan "Connect America" gives the private sector incentives to do business with non-traditional target markets such as poor urban areas that would have in the past not been cost effective. Through the use of government subsidies these areas would become attractive to businesses.

Clinton first released a statement in favor of Net Neutrality in 2006 with her intention to cosponsor the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, also referred to as the Dorgan and Snowe bill. This bill is intended to protect consumers as well as small businesses from possibly predatory internet service providers that would offer different pricing to large businesses and gouge other users. Clinton’s claim was to make sure that the Internet remained a place where "views are discussed and debated in an open forum without fear of censorship or reprisal". This view was again reiterated in 2007 with the reintroduction of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. This act is an amendment to the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Net Neutrality has been made even more relevant as of late with the reports last week of Comcast targeting specific software and blocking it on its network. In this case the software is BitTorrent, a vastly popular Peer to Peer file sharing program, although additional investigation by The Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed other software may be affected as well.

It appears Comcast, the largest ISP in the United States specializing in Cable Internet, is sending "forged packets" to users of certain targeted software. In the case of BitTorrent the packets are a forged reset command that would cause the software to shut down or experience a critical error. The EFF tested other software and found that Gnutella, the third largest Peer to Peer network, was also being sent forged packets that caused disruptions. The interruptions caused by the false packets are made to appear as if the software is malfunctioning on the end users side, and can even be intermittent.

If Comcast is purposefully altering traffic at its convenience, it appears the time has finally come for Internet legislation such as that put forth in the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. According to Clinton the Internet "does not decide who can enter its marketplace and it does not pick which views can be heard and which ones silenced. It is the embodiment of the fundamental democratic principles upon which our nation has thrived for hundreds of years."

If certain software is "silenced" by large providers now, what is to stop them from deciding what products can be used over their networks on an even broader scale? There is precedence that a large provider will try to censor political views that it considers highly controversial. In September Verizon Wireless blocked a pro-choice abortion group named NARAL in its attempts to distribute opt-in SMS news alerts. As there is no current legislation protecting SMS messaging, Verizon could have easily continued to block NARAL. Public outcry against censorship caused the company to reverse its decision this time, but perhaps in the future it would be best to have clear laws in place to protect the public.