Net Neutrality and Civil Liberties:

The issue of internet neutrality is murkily defined by geeky terminology so poorly understood that the same phrases are used by political adversaries. The internet is an agreement, not a thing. It is a designed and engineered environment, however, so the agreement, to exchange data packets using several protocols, can easily be changed. In that sense, while the internet itself seems to be scaling ever larger without breaking physically, the terms of the agreement that determine its nature, the protocols, can be changed depending on who's in charge. Code is law.

While the telecom industry likes to talk about needing tiers of service for reliable transmission of NFL games live on the Internet, the danger is in the consequent need to examine data packets. Then the Internet will no longer be stupid, treating all packets the same. It will be smart. It will be able to tell one packet from the next. Then the question becomes, who or what decides what to do with that packet? On what basis is the decision made? The who could be a legislature or a company or a librarian or a bureaucrat. The what could be an algorithm, an automated online robot, programmed by that bureaucrat. In either case, what is the difference between a filter and a censor?

If the Internet stays stupid, if it is merely a bit pipe, if it is neutral to the content of data packets, if it gives them all equal priority, then the civil liberties issues and problems will be located where they should be and always have been, in our institutions and homes and workplaces. If the Internet is not neutral, then either librarians should be very afraid or an alternate agreement, a "darknet", might develop using new protocols.

Roycroft Inn

Association of College & Research Libraries
Western New York / Ontario Chapter

1 - What is the Internet

The Internet is not a thing. It's an agreement.

The Internet is an open-source self-organizing adaptive many-to-many peer-to-peer international file-sharing public collaborative agreement based on human goodwill, which means it's teetering on anarchy. In human culture, this commons has been the fertile ground of cultural innovation. In corporate terms, an agreement to share is a threat to hierarchical control structures, like record labels.

The Internet is a world of ends.

5 - latest news on legal battle

6 - learn more

modified: January 27, 2007
by Douglas Anderson
http://RicciStreet.net/acrl.htm