Net neutrality is, at best, imperfect. Its rules are loose and ambiguous. Its definition of the internet is based on legislation that hasn’t been updated in decades. It helps create a further imbalance between tech giants and startups struggling to gain any ground on competition.

But despite its ambiguity, net neutrality is a necessity we can’t afford to lose.

When Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai unveiled the agency’s proposal to eliminate net neutrality — the set of standards forbidding internet service providers from treating any web content differently — he claimed doing so would make the government “stop micromanaging the internet.”

After Pai’s announcement, tech companies like Google and Facebook, alongside millions of activists, came together to voice their disapproval. They said net neutrality has the potential to limit user access to certain sites, treating internet access like a premium service instead of a necessity.

Net neutrality didn’t exist in legal form until 2015, when the FCC designated internet service as a utility and officially passed its rules for treating access to web services equally. Under the broad definition of net neutrality outlined then, prioritizing certain web packets over others can be considered against the rules.

But it’s also common practice in everyday internet access. Networks from Verizon FiOS to AirOrangeX already optimize traffic to ensure demands are met during peak times, like providing greater bandwidth to Netflix traffic when Syracuse University student usage peaks around 10:30 p.m. T-Mobile provides unlimited data for music apps including Spotify, and Verizon lets users swap high-quality videos for cheaper service.

Lee McKnight, a professor in the School of Information Studies at SU, blames the current mess of web policy on outdated telecom laws. Federal policy on the internet hasn’t been updated since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, when the web was hardly the multimedia juggernaut it is today. McKnight said the “badly dated” act has prevented a truly “open” internet from becoming a reality.

“What is truly needed now is new bipartisan open internet legislation, capturing the core sociotechnical essence of the open internet,” McKnight said in an email. “Without new legislation, we may have future damage to the open internet from the regulatory capture of the FCC, alternatively by the telecom firms usually favored by the Republicans, or the Internet firms often favored by Democrats.”

Kevin Camelo | Contributing Designer

As McKnight pointed out, internet policy has become a polarizing political issue, and neither side is happy with the current environment. As much as people hate internet service providers, there is value in the freedom to prioritize certain in-demand traffic over others.

And on the other side of the coin, smaller companies would rather not see their service suffer. Eliminating the 2015 FCC standards won’t increase competition by allowing internet service providers like Comcast and Time Warner — whose reputations were already so poor that they rebranded their services as Xfinity and Spectrum, respectively — more freedom to screw over their customers.

Yet even though net neutrality is an imperfect standard, it’s better than no standard at all. Hate speech, accessibility, piracy and harassment all stand as horrible facts of life on the internet, which will all need to be addressed by internet service providers, tech companies and legislators alike.

Handing control of the internet disproportionately over to one side, with or without net neutrality, sets us further back on the journey toward making the internet a safe and open space for everyone. So, let’s take a break from ruining the internet even more, and for once, try making it better.

Brett Weiser-Schlesinger is a senior newspaper and online journalism and information management and technology dual major. He can be reached by email at bweisers@syr.edu or on Twitter at @brettws.

Published on December 6, 2017 at 1:02 am