4Pragmatic Analysis
In February 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under the Obama administration approved for the first time a comprehensive set of regulations with the purpose of formally protecting net neutrality.1 “Net neutrality” is the belief that internet providers should manage all legal online content equally in terms of access. Proponents of net neutrality argue that internet providers like Comcast and AT&T should not be able to privilege select content with faster download/streaming speeds or block users from content that they deem undesirable. The 2015 regulations argued that broadband internet access is a telecommunications service akin to telephony and radio, so while the companies that provide this access might maintain private interests, their business is nevertheless in the public interest and therefore subject to federal regulation.
Only 2 years later, however, the composition of the FCC had changed under the Trump administration, and in December 2017 the agency voted to repeal the 2015 regulations. The new FCC argued that the development of internet infrastructure had flourished until the 2015 intervention, which imposed a ...
Get Critical Media Studies, 3rd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
